


Orpheus

by AstridContraMundum



Series: After-comers Cannot Guess [6]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: A little h/c, Multi, PTSD, Period-Typical Homophobia, because something happens to Morse every season, case-fic, literary quote puzzles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-10-04 06:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 69,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17299871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: Oxford has long been a city of two halves: town and gown. But when the worst of the two worlds meet, plunging the city of dreaming spires into a nightmare of violence and death, nine unlikely people come together to save the place that gave each of them a second chance at life.An After the Bacchanal AU Case-Fic





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Joss Bixby sat behind the large desk in his study, the afternoon light slanting through the windows, throwing the richness of the wood and the red of the Persian carpet into bright relief.

“Don’t be so ridiculous,” he said, inserting the slightest edge of ice into his warm and polished voice. “It was merely a proposal. I’m at perfect liberty to change my mind whenever I like.”

He leaned back in his chair, twisting the cord of the phone with his fingers, listening with bored contempt to the man’s reply.

“That’s my final word. And I would advise you not to waste my time with this again.”

He hung up the receiver with a decisive click.

**********

*********** 

Reginald Bright unfurled the newspaper, scanned the headlines, and sighed in disgust.

“Who watches the watchmen?” he muttered to himself.

He had seen this sort of rot before, twice in his career—once when he was with the Colonial Police in India and once when he was Chief Superintendent at the Cowley CID— it was sort that comes only from decay from within. Thank God, at least, for men like Thursday and Strange who had survived the merger, and the for the youthful idealism of new constables like Trewlove, who he was just bringing on before he’d been forced into retirement.

“Everything all right dear?” his wife asked.

He gave her a reassuring smile.

“Quite,” he said.

*******

*******

Derek Jacobs found Cromwell Ames waiting at the appointed spot; the man was sitting on a bench, arms stretched out along the back on both sides, gazing out over the green lawns of Merton College like a man surveying his verdant and marble-columned kingdom.

“It’s done,” Derek said. “We’re putting the squeeze on Nero, that’s for sure. This town is nearly ours, just as you said.”

“Oh, no,” Ames said. “We haven’t even begun, my son. There’s a whole other Oxford out there, didn’t you know that now? A whole Oxford we've barely begun to touch. It's just been a question of finding the right people to go in with us.”

Derek furrowed his brow in confusion. “What is it that you had in mind?”

************

*************

Endeavour Morse dropped his satchel on the hallway table and headed straight for the drawing room to pour himself a glass of Scotch.

It seemed an age since he had left that morning for Paris, but he had done it.

It was just like he told himself that morning, when he got behind the wheel of his blue Jag and turned the key in the ignition. The key. The key was this: don’t look back. The sooner he left for Paris, the sooner he would be home.

After draining his glass, he sauntered over to his record player. He pulled a record out of its sleeve and murmured:

 

_He turned his eyes—and straight she slipped away._

_He stretched his arms to hold her—to be held—_

_And clasped, poor soul, naught but the yielding air_.

 

The only way to move forward, was never to look back. If you looked back, you might lose everything.

 

Endeavour set the needle on the record, and an aria of Puccini’s swelled throughout the airy, sunlit room.

 

                                    ENDEAVOUR

 

                                      ORPHEUS

 

It was a bleak December day, the sky white, the sidewalks silent and deserted, three days after Christmas— that odd time of year between Boxing Day and New Year’s when half the world seemed to be sleeping.

Unfortunately, whoever was responsible for the havoc wreaking through Oxford like a whirlwind seemed to be wide awake. And hard at work.

 

Jim Strange searched through a cab that had been left parked in the middle of a quiet backstreet lined with tidy rowhouses, while the sawbones examined the cabbie’s body. Poor bloke looked to have been stabbed in the chest, and now lay there in a heap, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, tossed out by the curb.

 

“A few cigarette butts in the ashtray, nothing of note,” he reported to Thursday, who stood, arms folded, glowering beneath his hat, on the sidewalk outside.

Strange rifled through the glove compartment, and sure enough, there it was, another message on red paper. Although this time, it wasn’t even in English.

 

_Ne hedde he paes heafolan, as sio hand gebarn_

_modiges mannes, paer he his maegenes healp_.

 

He got out of the car and handed the paper to Thursday.

“What do you suppose this means, then?”

Thursday took the paper and looked at it. “Bugger if I know,” he grunted. “Best to call around at one of the colleges, see if you can’t get someone to give us some insight on this thing.”

Strange grimaced. It was a conversation they’d had before. Too many times before.

“Why the face, Sergeant?” Thursday asked. “Can’t be too hard now, can it? This is Oxford. You can’t throw a rock without hitting an expert.”

“This is yet again a different style of writing though, isn’t it?” Strange asked. “Which means they’ll be sending over a different don. Third message, third expert. Hardly an efficient way to solve the larger puzzle, I’d have thought.”

“We don’t need them to solve the larger puzzle. We just need them to tell us what it says,” Thursday countered.

 

“Of course,” Strange said. “They do that very well. They all of them can tell us what it _says_. Shame really, that none of them can tell us what it _means._ ”

“All right, Sergeant. Let’s get to your point.”  

“I don’t have to, do I, sir? You know as well as I do who we could use on this case.” 

“Morse, Morse,” Thursday snorted. “What do we want Morse here for? Don’t we have enough troubles to be getting on with? I would have thought you’d be the last person to want to bring Morse in on this—you were the one left cleaning up the mess he left here last summer, as I recall.”

Strange huffed a gentle laugh. “Rather be left with a mess of paperwork about an unauthorized vehicular check-out than a mess like this,” he said, indicating the cabbie’s bloody corpse, tossed into curb like a piece of trash out the window. “What’s this? Three brutal murders in three weeks? Not to mention that suspicions sudden at Lonsdale. This is supposed to be Oxford, not the bloody Wild West.”

From the sidewalk below, where he sat crouched beside the cabbie’s body, Dr. DeBryn cleared his throat meaningfully.

“For what it’s worth, I’m not certain that Sergeant Strange isn’t on to something there,” he said.

Thursday couldn’t hide a flash of annoyance. Strange regretted that now; he never should have had words with the old man with DeBryn in earshot. That would be sure to irritate him no end, having his authority questioned before an audience.

But, it was so easy sometimes to forget DeBryn was there.

And it was so easy to get Thursday’s back up. He was as touchy as a live grenade these days. It seemed somehow as if he was always looking over his shoulder.

 

****

It was a miracle that Strange managed to steer the Inspector into the Lamb and Flag. The old man could do with a bite and a pint; and so could Strange, for that matter. A warm up by a nice fire wouldn’t do any harm either. It was as cold and desolate a winter day as Strange had ever remembered.

Strange sat the old man in a dark wood booth and set a pint before him. Thursday drained his glass in one go. Strange blinked.

“Why don’t you have your sandwich, sir?” he suggested. “What’s today? Ham and tomato?”

Thursday scowled, as if the mention of sandwiches again brought up the shadow of Morse. And it did seem almost as if he were there, somehow, slouched with them at the table, murmuring, “No, it’s cheese and pickle,” as he brooded over his glass of ale.

“I don’t have one today,” Thursday said, looking out the window. “I must have . . . I must have left it on the counter.”

Then, the old man stood up and went to fetch another pint before Strange had even a taste of his first. When he returned, he settled down with the air of a man who wished for nothing more than to drink his beer and be left entirely alone.

Strange took a deep breath. Might as well try. “So,” he said. “How do you rate Britain’s chances this year for the World Cup?”  

*****

The visit to the pub proved to be not much of a respite. Back at the nick, they found DC Fancy clearly flustered, his thick dark hair standing out all ends, as if he’d run his hands through it in a burst of panic. He greeted them as a drowning man greets a lifeboat.

 “Anything in?” Thursday asked.

“In? What isn’t in, sir?  We’ve got a missing person in Jericho, another sudden at Lonsdale, an arson over at Highgate Towers –and a report there’s been some sort of attack over at . . .”

“Hold on, Constable,” Thursday intoned. “Let’s just take this one step at a time, shall we? The missing in Jericho?”

“Derek Jacobs. Age 20. His parents came by. They’ve been worried for a while, felt he’s fallen in with a bad crowd. Hasn’t been home in a few days.”

Thursday nodded, talking the information in.

“Photograph?”

Fancy’s brown eyes widened in alarm.

“You didn’t get a photograph,” Thursday said, rather than asked.  

“Sir. The man is twent . . .”

“I don’t care how old he is, Constable. If his family’s concerned enough to come in, we ask for a photo. You’ll just have to ring them back. Now. This sudden?”

“Mark Ashley, sir. Nineteen. Found dead in his rooms. Much like that student last week. Most likely drugs, we’re presuming. Dr. DeBryn has already been notified.”

Thursday pinched his nose. “Where are they getting this stuff?” he murmured.

Indeed, Strange thought. It seemed somehow the students were getting access to all sorts of things as of late, and rather too easily.

 

Then, Thursday said, “And the arson?”

“High occupancy on Khartoum Street. Six Kenyan Asian families evacuated. No one injured, sir. Constable Tyler has headed over.”

“Do we know who owns the building?”

Fancy’s pause was telling enough. Suddenly, Thursday looked almost ill. He took a deep breath and said, “That’ll be worth looking into, Constable. Now, and this attack?”

“Over at an advice center not far from the high-occupancy, on Poplar Str . . .

“Hang on,” Strange said, “Isn’t that where Joanie wor. . . “ 

 

It happened in an instant. So quickly that Strange registered it only as a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. Thursday seized his chest and fell gasping into a chair.

“Sir?” he asked, reaching for his shoulder.

“I’m all right, Sergeant,” Thursday managed to rasp, striking his hand away.

Strange looked up to Fancy. “Call an ambulance.”

 

******

It was Chief Superintendent Dawkins who gave him the key.

“Tried ringing his house, no answer. Why don’t you go over to his place, bring him whatever he might need.”

Strange held the key firm in his hand.

Whatever he might need?

 Sort of a vague directive, really.

********

The Thursdays’ house had an odd air of desertion about it. He’d only been so far as the dining room before, but the place always seemed to hum along with a sweet air of domesticity, to radiate with warmth and coziness.

But today, the place felt as empty and as a bleak as a late December sky. The dining room table, which usually shone with a soft glow, was smudged and covered with scattered cups and a half-eaten sandwich, tossed onto the table without even a plate. On his way though, Strange stole a glance into the kitchen, where a mound of dishes were piled in the sink.

“Mrs. Thursday?” he called, quite unnecessarily. It was clear to Strange that Mrs. Thursday hadn’t been here for weeks.

Here it was, three days after Christmas, and there wasn’t a tree nor even a stray tendril of tinsel anywhere in the house. The only sign of holiday was an unopened brown parcel, sitting on the kitchen counter, covered in red and blue stamps.

Strange read the return label.

 

_Endeavour Morse_

_22 Rue des Ponts_

_54002 Saint-Brieuc_

_France_

 

 

Well, as the good Chief Superintendent said.

Strange went to the phone table in the den and opened a drawer. An address book rested on top of the flotsam inside.

He thumbed through the book until the _M_ s, and there it was, in block letters.

_MORSE_

The name was followed by a series of crossed out addresses, most likely correlating to the string of bedsits he once occupied. Until the very end. The last was that same address in France that was on the package. Followed by a phone number.

 (33 3) 89 87 22 34

He wrote the number down in his notebook and then went upstairs to pack a suitcase for Thursday.  

********

Once he was home, Strange dialed the number tucked in his pocket.

 

“Bixby,” intoned a steady voice.

Strange hesitated a moment, trying to place that voice. It must be that bloke, then. The one in the photographs with Morse and the Thursdays, the one in the blue convertible who was there that day he had been waiting to take the guv’nor over to DeBryn’s for the Finch autopsy, the one who had called Morse “Josephine.”

Huh. Well.

“Is Morse in? This is Jim Strange. Detective Sergeant at Thames Valley.”

A delicate pause.

“Ah,” said Bixby.

Another pause.

“This is about that car, is it?” Bixby asked. Before Strange could answer, he was interrupted by the sound of a hand clamping down over the phone and a shout. “Endeavour!”

 

Strange stood, tracing his eyes over the patterns on his kitchen wallpaper, waiting for the man to come back on the line.

 

“I’m terribly sorry, old man,” the smooth voice resumed. “He just . . .  he just stepped out for a moment. I’ll have him ring you back.”

Strange rolled his eyes. “Stepped out” my eye. Run out, more likely. The others might make excuses for Morse, saying he’d been drugged, saying he wasn’t playing with a full deck these days, but Strange felt that Morse understood well enough what he had done. He simply hadn’t cared at the time.

 “All right,” Strange said. “And tell Morse it isn’t about that car. I’ve already cleared all that up.”

And a ruddy pain it was, too, he was tempted to add.

“Ah,” said Bixby again. “Well. Thanks, old man.”

Strange gave the man his number, but whether or not Morse would call back was anybody’s guess.

He always was a prickly bugger.

*****

Strange was just finishing up cleaning his trombone when the phone rang.

“Strange,” he answered.  

There was a long pause. The line sounded to be full of static, as if there was a bad connection . . . or, perhaps because it was a call from overseas? Might it just be . . .

“Morse?” Strange asked.

Then there was a murmur of an uncertain voice.

“So.  This isn’t about the car?”

“No,” Strange sighed. “It’s about the old man.”

 

****

The more Endeavour packed, the more his face seemed to tighten, turning pale in the weak morning light. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he said, pulling a jumper from a drawer and then sliding the drawer shut. “Just five months ago, I promised myself I’d never go to Oxford again.”

 “That was an odd promise to make,” Bixby said. “One never knows where life might take one. Or where one might be needed.”

“ _Am_ I needed, though? I certainly made a hash of things last summer.”

“How so? You solved the case, didn’t you?”

“I suppose,” Endeavour said. “If you don’t count getting myself drugged and stealing a police car in the process against me.”

“Well,” Bixby said, making another trip into his closet, “you were just getting back into the swing of things, that’s all.”

Endeavour laughed ruefully. “Actually, perhaps it wasn’t so very different from my career as a detective the first time round.” He tossed a shirt into his suitcase. “You really don’t mind?" he asked. "Coming to England?"

“No. It’s a bit of luck really,” Bixby said, folding a shirt with a bit more care than Endeavour had done. “I have some business there I want to get straightened out.”

“What sort of business?”

“Oh, nothing of note,” Bixby said airly. He reached forward and moved Endeavour’s suitcase so that he could look at the mess inside. “It looks like you’ve got a bit of room left,” he said. “Why don’t you bring that kilt along?”

“What? Why on earth would I . . .”

Bixby smiled and raised his eyebrows.

 “ . . . need . .  ,” Endeavour stopped mid-sentence. “Wait.” He looked at him uncertainly. “What. _Really_?” he asked.

Bixby shrugged again. “Well. We will be in Britain. Might as well try the thing on.”

Endeavour laughed. “Well, all right then. Please just don’t tell poor old Mrs. Munroe, whatever it is you’re planning.”

Bixby assumed a face of complete innocence, spreading his hands wide. “Why on earth would I tell some old woman you met in Wick once anything of the sort?”

“You know what I mean. She took it all quite seriously, the regalia, the ceremony. She might think it sacrilegious to use the thing as, well, as some sort of costume.”

“On the contrary,” Bixby said. “I’ll treat it with the utmost reverence and devotion.”

“Ha,” Endeavour said. But he went back to his wardrobe all the same.

 

Bixby smiled and zipped a garment bag with crisp precision. Perhaps this trip needn’t be a complete slog. But still, he couldn’t help but wonder . . .

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” he asked. “Are you sure you want to stay at the house at Lake Silence?”

“I don’t mind,” Endeavour said. “I’d sooner stay there than a hotel. I just had no idea you were renovating the place.”

“I did try to sell it. But there’s something about having one of your guests blow his brains out in the great hall that . . . “

 

It was then that Bixby noticed Endeavour’s face going even whiter than before.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “That was a rather indelicate. . . That whole wing has been razed, at any rate. The architect I hired said it was better that way, said it made sure the place retained a sense of balance in the design.”

“It’s fine,” Endeavour said. “It’s more a question of . . . well, the neighbors.”

“What about them?”

“I’m just not keen on running into any of them, that’s all.”

“Pah!” Bixby said. “Who cares about them? We've acres between us. I wouldn't worry. Everything will be fine. You'll see,” Bixby said. “It won’t be like the last time.”

 

“How do you know that?” Endeavour asked, watching him uncertainly.

“Why, we’ll be going together this time,” Bixby said.

 

Endeavour gave him a blank look.  

“We went together the last time, I had thought."

“We did," Bixby agreed. "And we didn’t. You know what I mean, old man.”

 

Endeavour considered him for a moment, and then reached to fold a shirt tossed out onto the bed. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do.” 

*****

Ronald Beavis sat in a greasy booth at the back of Brown’s café, wondering how a policeman becomes a thief.

In one pocket was a sliver watch, given to him at his so-called retirement.

 _“Well done, good and faithful servant,_ ” the inscription read.

Beavis huffed a rueful laugh. “Good boy, Ronnie,” he murmured to himself. “Now run along now.”

Somehow, he had never managed to make himself into Inspector material. When the merger came, his station had one sergeant too many. Suddenly, there were younger, fitter men to fill those new vacancies.

Suddenly, Ronald Beavis was surplus goods. Next thing he knew, he was given a silver watch and a pink slip.

 

So he’d gotten a part-time job to make the rent. As a security guard over at the Pitt-Rivers. Where he got treated like absolute rubbish by the crowd of academics who breezed through, one after the other, as exhibits went on and off show.

The worse was that bastard, Professor Copley-Barnes.

 Smug, condescending know-it-all.

Wouldn’t be so smug anymore, would he, when half of his precious Wolvercote Trove disappeared right under his eyes?

For in Beavis’ other pocket, was a gold Anglo-Saxon cuff bracelet. He’d been offered a good price by the man who commissioned him to take the thing, but he’d been doing a bit of research, and he was beginning to think he could do better.

Perhaps, the things he had taken might fetch enough to buy a whole new life.

For what was his life, really? The daily crossword to keep his darkening thoughts at bay, the mockery and humiliation he was fed at the Pitt-Rivers, then home to a cramped bedsit—a place that felt increasingly like nothing so much as a coffin—for the solace of a glass of Scotch and a Rosalind Calloway album, the one thing that provided a spark of beauty in his life.

And his life held so little of that. Little of interest, less of beauty.

But with the money he could get for a few gold pieces, dug up by some graduate student years ago, he could move far away—to Barbados, Tortola—anywhere—and begin again. The world would be his oyster.

It wasn’t too late.

And it would all be worth it.

For what is a life without beauty, after all?

Just one long, meaningless, empty expanse, a long darkening plain with no horizon.

A life without beauty is terror.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 . . . in which WPC Trewlove makes a leap, DC Morse makes a stand, Dr. DeBryn makes a decision and Tony Chalbourne makes himself a good stiff drink.

 

 

The first thing he ever said to her was, “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?”

How utterly disappointing.

 “My job,” she had said, with as much coldness as she could muster.  

 

It was a shame, too, really. She had hoped that at Oxford things might be different. That, here, in a forward-thinking university town, she might be taken seriously.

But no. It was the same everywhere you went. Even the female students—girls bright enough and clever enough to be admitted to Oxford—were referred to as “Matilda beasts” as if they were somehow less than human.

“Hard to get, eh?” he asked, his smile beginning to fade.

“Oh, you’ve no idea,” she said.

 

But then, in an instant, Shirley Trewlove’s opinion of DC Fancy began to change.

For there it was: his thin, smiling face fell, as if he realized that his joke had missed its mark. And then he hurried on about his business with the air of a man who had walked into a glass door and hoped no one would notice.

So many of the men she had to rebuff throughout the course of her day tended to grow surly, even quite nasty. On occasion, men had even stepped in closer, towering over her, as they offered their retorts.

But DC Fancy only blinked, as if by doing so he might see her more clearly, and then went on his way.

 

She decided it was most likely true that he was, indeed, an idiot, but that she would— as she did in every instance— keep an open mind until all the evidence was in.

 

 

“Poor bloke,” Fancy had said, on the day that Endeavour Morse had come into the station and then left with DI Thursday to go out to Maplewick Hall. “I’d hate if someone took anything I’d written and broadcast it to the entire world.”

This was intriguing. What would prompt Fancy say that, in such a heartfelt, empathetic manner? She would have thought him incapable of writing anything other than a bad cheque to make the rent.

 

Once Morse had left Oxford and that incendiary biography by Jerome Hogg hit the shelves, the nick was awash with gossip. Fancy was so young, so eager, and he did so want to fit in. It would have been so easy for him—who had spoken to Morse perhaps more than anyone else at the station, save for DS Strange and DI Thursday—to share whatever fresh material he might have collected with the other constables, who stood sniggering over in the corner by the file cabinets.

She waited for him to join them. But he never did.

“Morse is all right,” he would say reprovingly, whenever some juicy tidbit from that book was being dragged out over the coals, examined with relish.

 

And who would have thought it?

DC Fancy might not be the cleverest man she had met, but he was something exceedingly more rare. He was decent, through and through.

 

 “What did you talk to Morse about, that day, anyway?” she asked. “The day you were in so early?”

“Music, mostly,” he said. And then, clearing his throat, trying to look more serious and slightly lowering his voice, “That and the case, of course.”

Trewlove smiled bemusedly. “Of course."

 

There was more to George Fancy than met the eye, she would have to admit that.

And he did have a certain adorable, puppyish sort of charm.

 

If one went in for that sort of thing.

 

 

Trewlove stole a glance at her watch—it was nearly time to check in; somehow she had managed to dream away her entire lunch break. But it was nice, here, sitting on a bench by the Isis, the branches of the trees drawing stark outlines against the white winter sky. Quiet. Not many ventured out on such a cold day, the sharp sort of day that turns your breath into bursts of mist right before your eyes.

“Hello,” called a voice.

Trewlove looked up to see DC Fancy, his hands deep in his pockets, walking along the riverbank, his dark fringe flopping into his eyes a bit as he went.

“A bit cold out, for a walk, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I like the winter air,” Fancy said, sitting on the bench beside her. “But I suppose you’re right. A person would have to be cracked to be sitting out here, right?” He smiled hopefully.

This time she recognized the jest for what it was. And she decided to take a leap.

“I was at the Brennan Street Market this morning. You might want to take a look at Lloyd Collins. West Indian, Jamaican possibly. He’s got a record stall there.”

“And?” Fancy asked, confused by her evident non-sequitur.  

“You asked me to be on the lookout for Killoran whiskey going cheap. He’s using a bit of cardboard from a case of the same on his stall. His prices are written on the back.”

“Oh?” Fancy said.

“He’s also using a few of the boxes to store second-hand records. Seems an awful lot of boxes to have on hand from a single product,” she said casually. Then she paused and added, “A collar like that, you can make a name for yourself.”

He turned and looked at her, considering her for a few long moments before he spoke.  “So why are you telling me this?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“Because I’m all heart.”

And then she got up from the bench and headed back to the station to report back on shift.  

There, she thought, as she walked along the cold dark river.

Let him make that of that what he will.

 

******

George Fancy sat on the bench by the Isis for such a long time, replaying the odd conversation he had had with WPC Trewlove in his mind, that he was almost late in picking up DS Strange for their one o’clock with Dr. DeBryn. He jumped up in a panic and hurried back to fetch a Jag, lest they be late.

There was something intimidating about Dr. DeBryn. He seemed always to be making little quips and jokes, some of which seemed to be made at his, Fancy’s, expense, and most of which seemed to sail right over his head.

The worst part of it was, Trewlove gave every indication of cottoning on to them all too well.

Just last week, at the bedside of an old woman who had appeared to have died in her sleep, Fancy had said, “Nothing suspicious, then?” To which the doctor had replied, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than meet the eye.”

 And Fancy had played right into it. “Who’s Horatio?” he blurted, before he noticed Shirl’s lips twitch in a smile.

If the doctor were a more approachable sort, he’d be tempted to take him aside, plead for him to ease up a bit, at least when Shirl was around. Really. Give a bloke a chance, won’t you?

But the odd little man was so self-assured, so self-contained, so crisply efficient, so utterly without emotion—what would be the point? Dr. DeBryn would never understand what it was like to pine for someone  who you fear in your heart is most likely hopelessly out of your league.

************

“Today’s triple feature,” DeBryn began, "two cases of tainted Chinese heroin with an encore of a stab wound straight to the heart.”

Fancy grimaced. He had never gotten used to the oddly cheery way in which the doctor went about his business, seeming to bounce on his toes as he revealed a corpse on the slab, much as magician might reveal a white rabbit.

The cases of Jack Hutchens, aged 20 and Mark Ashley, aged 19, were straightforward enough. Both were students at Lonsdale, both with toxicology reports indicating they had gotten ahold of the same batch of bad stuff. A tale that told itself simply, and increasingly, all too often. The college students were silly with it these days. It seemed daft to Fancy, that men not much younger than himself, who were handed every chance in life, should be so quick to throw it all away.

He was just thinking over what a waste it all was, when DeBryn’s next sentence caught his full attention.

“Our encore is . . .  it’s a bit brutal, I’m afraid. I should warn you,” he said, as he pulled out the next slab from a cold chamber and then uncovered the third body.

Even Sgt. Strange seemed to whiten at the sight.

“Stephen Lane,” Dr. DeBryn supplied. “Aged thirty-two. Cab driver. As you can see, the wound is particularly vicious, as if the assailant was trying to cut away the man’s heart. About a seven-inch blade, I would say. Serrated edge.”

“Perhaps one of those heavy-duty kitchen knives, doctor?” asked DI Thursday, sweeping off his hat and coming in through the door.

“Sir,” Strange said, surprised. “I thought they said you would be in hospital until Friday.”

“Just a case of acute angina, Sergeant. No point in keeping me any longer.  Not when I have so much to be going on with.”

“Welcome back, then, Inspector,” Dr. DeBryn said, crisply, “Glad to see you looking so well.” He cast an uncertain look at Strange, and Fancy couldn’t help but follow his gaze.

“Is there a problem, Sergeant?” Thursday asked. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

“No, sir,” Strange said.

“Well,” Thursday intoned, “Carry on then, doctor.”

And then the doctor did, explaining the nature of Stephen Lane’s wound with a thoroughness that led Fancy to keep his eyes trained on the cold, white tiled floor.

 

***************

Fancy trailed Strange and Thursday back through the aisles of desks, towards the back of the nick, his mind full of what he had seen at the mortuary. He hardly noticed when the two ahead of him stopped short— so abruptly, in fact, that he nearly stumbled into their broad backs.

Fancy looked around the Inspector’s shoulder to see what it was that caught their attention. There was a man at Strange’s desk, his red-blonde curly head,—topped with Italian movie star sunglasses—bent over the typewriter, as he sat, clacking away.

“Morse?” Thursday boomed.

Morse looked up. “Hello, sir,” he said.  

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

Morse furrowed his brow. “Strange called,” he said simply. “He said you needed me for a case.”

Thursday’s face was full of thunder, but before he could speak, Strange cut in.

“You told me to bring in an expert. And so I did,” he said.

“I said to call the colleges. Not Morse,” Thursday thundered.

Morse cut a look at Strange. “You said Thursday needed me for a case.”

Fancy couldn’t ever before recall feeling sorry for stolid DS Strange. But now he did. Caught between one pair of wide blue eyes and one pair of narrow dark ones, he looked like nothing so much as an overlarge, clumsy deer that had stumbled into the crossfire of two rifles.  

“Well. This is just dandy,” Thursday growled.

“Why are you acting this way?” Morse said. From what Strange said, it sounds as if I could be of some use.”

“No, you can’t,” Thursday said.

“How can you say that? You haven’t even given me the details on this. It’s a bit premature to jump to that conclusion, surely,” Morse replied.

This seemed to trigger something in the Inspector.  For a moment, Fancy feared he might suffer another attack. “You take it too far, Morse. And that’s the truth of it. You’ve been what, stabbed, shot, and now, this summer, drugged senseless. For a moment, I . . .” He sputtered and changed direction. “You don’t know when to quit, Morse. You’re a bloody  . . . You’re not a detective.”

“I never put my papers in,” Morse countered.

Thursday huffed a soft laugh. “Seeing as how you haven’t reported for shift in three years, I would have thought that was our answer.”

“Nor have I ever been served any papers terminating my employment,” Morse continued crisply, looking not at Thursday but at a space somewhere on the wall, behind his left shoulder.

“How could Division send you any papers? You skipped the country, didn’t you?”

Morse continued undaunted. “My photo is in every bookshop in the country. And on the flyleaf, my publisher’s addresses. They’ve an office right in London. Even my editor at the Paris office is half English; he’s perfectly capable of forwarding any letter sent to him. Any letter sent to me at either address would reach me. I’m hardly difficult to find. Should be easy for a city’s worth of _fine detectives_ , I would have thought.”

 

“I can’t see what harm it can do, telling him about what’s happened,” Fancy said.  

Fancy didn’t realize that he had spoken the thought aloud until the eyes of all three of them—Strange, Thursday and Morse—swung to him.

“I mean, seeing as he’s come all this way,” Fancy finished lamely.

“Yes,” Morse said, standing up. “I’ve been drug all this way for nothing. I didn’t even want to come, especially.”  He drew himself up to his full height and for a moment his face contorted, as if he was struggling to think of something particularly cutting to say. “I’m charging Thames Valley with the price of my airfare,” he announced. And, with that, he stood up from the desk and began stalking out of the room. 

Thursday sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Eh, bugger it,” he muttered.

Then he turned after him.  “Morse!” he roared.  

Morse stopped.

“Sit down.”

Morse considered him for a moment, and then turned and kept on going.

“I said sit down, lad.”

The weariness in the old man’s voice was surprising.  Morse must have heard the note of it, too, for he turned and walked back, sinking carefully into Strange’s chair.

 

“It’s a right mess here. This isn’t the Oxford you knew. If you go about here like you usually . . . We’ve got no less than a bloody gang war. Right here in Oxford. Never thought I’d see the day. Thought it was like a paradise when I first brought the kids here. . . .  And now. . . .” Thursday paused and took a deep breath. “Here. Come along with me.”

Morse half-rose from the chair, eyeing Thursday cautiously.

“Come on, then,” Thursday said.

 

Thursday led Morse, Fancy and Strange to a board on the wall, pinned with photographs and scraps of paper.

“It’s the same one,” Morse said, wonderingly. He reached up and traced the frame of the cork board with one narrow, pale hand. “From the Cowley CID.”

“Yeah. I took it off the wall the last night we were there,” Thursday said. “They were getting ready to gut the place anyway, so I thought, might as well.  We had a good record in those days. Thought it might bring with it some of the old feeling.”

Morse nodded, as if he understood.  

 

“So,” Thursday said, indicating the first photograph on the board. “Eddie Nero. A yob I know from way back. As long as it was just him operating, and we knew where to find him, we could keep his activities under control. Even when we couldn’t quite get enough evidence to stop him, we could keep the pressure on, keep his operations at a minimum. But now, there’s a new game in town.”

He moved on to a second photo.  “Cromwell Ames. Don’t know much about him. West Indian. Hasn’t been in the country long, I don’t believe. But these two devils have been at one another’s throats ever since Ames started making his presence known.”

 

Morse got out a small notebook and began writing in it as Thursday spoke. The Inspector raised his eyebrows for a moment, but, then, said nothing and continued on.

 

“And now,” Thursday said, with a deep sigh, “We’ve had three murders over the past few weeks. Each victim has been left with a message on red paper.”

Thursday moved down the line to where three photos were pinned, surrounded by red papers, ticket stubs, dry cleaning tabs, and bits of papers found in pockets.  

 

“The first, Simon Myette. Café Owner, aged 48. Jamaican immigrant. Married, three kids. Two grown, one still at home. No previous record, no known enemies, no financial troubles. Found dead in the doorway of his café right at eight in the morning, when he looked to be opening up for the day. In his pocket, this message, written in Greek.”

Thursday indicated a red paper pinned to the board.

Morse read aloud, “‘ _Just look how Zeus has covered the wide sky with clouds, stirred up the sea with stormy blasts from different winds, swooping down upon me._ ’” He tilted his head. “Those words are spoken by Odysseus,” he said, “when he fears he might be shipwrecked. Perhaps something to do with Myette having come from across the sea?”

“That’s just what the don from Magdalen College said,” Strange said. “But other than that . . . nothing else to go on.”

 

“Then, the next week,” Thursday said, moving down to the next photo, one of an elderly man with a spray of white hair, “another murder. Harold Newby. Lorry driver. Aged 66. Viciously assaulted just as he was making a delivery of Killoran whiskey. The lorry was found completely empty when we were called in, the shipment taken down to the last bottle. Only the driver’s body remained, left on the ground by the lorry. It was found with this message: _‘Rest you fair, good signor! Your Worship was the last man in our mouths.’”_

“It’s from the Merchant of Venice,” Morse supplied. “ _The last man in our mouths?_ Meaning that they were speaking of him. Why would the murderers have been speaking of him, if it’s gang-related? A 66-year-old lorry driver wouldn’t have had ought to do with them, I wouldn’t have thought.”

“No,” Thursday said. “No apparent connection whatsoever. Just like Simon Myette, he seems to have been a working man just going about his business.”

 

“And then,” Thursday continued, “Two days ago. A cab driver. Stephen Lane. Found stabbed in the chest next to his cab, left abandoned in a quiet side street. With this note.”

Thursday indicated another piece of red paper, written with the words:  

_Ne hedde he paes heafolan, as sio hand gebarn_

_modiges mannes, paer he his maegenes healp._

 

Fancy began to feel himself caught up in the way Morse and Thursday’s sentences ricocheted one after the other; it was a bit like watching a very well-played game of tennis, where the players make it all seem so effortless. One would pick up the train of thought where the other left off.

 

Just then, the phone began to ring.

 

Morse continued, as if he heard nothing. “Sloppy,” he said. “No accent marks. It’s Old English, from Beowulf. ‘ _He left the head alone, but his hand was burned when he came to his kinsman’s aid._ ’ Wiglaf helping Beowulf against a dragon. But the man’s hand wasn’t burned, presumably . . . was it?”

“No . . .,” Thursday answered.

 

Fancy realized too late that it should have been he, as the junior-most officer, who should have gone to answer the phone.

But no matter. Sgt. Strange bustled off to answer it, as if glad for the chance to leave Morse and Thursday to it for a while, until he was sure things between the two were running smoothly.

 

 

“Another red paper?” Strange said into the receiver, catching their attention.

“Yes. Thank you, Constable.”

The sergeant looked up. “WPC Trewlove, sir. A man found dead in his bed over in Jericho. Landlady found a piece of red paper in his pocket. Dr. DeBryn has been notified. He’s already on his way.”

“Right,” Morse said. “I’ll just get my coat.”

“Where are you going?” Thursday asked.

“To Jericho. To see this note.”

“I’m sure we can call Trewlove back to see what it says. There’s no need for you to go over. We can give you all the information you need.”

Morse gave a light, scoffing laugh. “But, I’ll have no context, sir. What is it you expect me to do, exactly? Pull some meaning out of what you’ve just given me, without getting all of the details?”

Thursday's face darkened. “It’s not your place to be worrying about the details.”

“ _Place_?” Morse repeated. “What is my _place,_ sir?”

“Your place is where I say it is, no more, no less,” Thursday snapped.  

“Right,” Morse said, in mock-agreement. “Right. So, I am supposed to sit here, while others bring me their questions, and then pour forth wisdom like a fountain? I’m a detective. Not the bloody Oracle of Delphi!”

“It’s just some dead bloke’s apartment,” Fancy said. “I don’t see what harm it could do, letting him take a look.”

Thursday’s dark eyes swung from Morse to him, narrowing as they traced their path.  Fancy swallowed.

“Fine, then,” Thursday said. Then he smiled as if he were preparing to give Fancy a tremendous treat. “You can take him over, then, Constable Fancy.”

“I don’t need someone to “ _take me over.”_ Nor do I need to be spoken of in the third person,” Morse said haughtily, getting up to leave.  

“I’ll go with them,” Strange offered.

“Oh, no, Sergeant,” Thursday said. “It would be better for you to get caught up on your paperwork. Something tells me you’ll have a lot more headed your way.”

Morse stopped and scowled at Thursday, but Thursday stormed on at him.

“One sign of trouble, you leave, you got me? And before you do anything, you ask.”

Morse kept walking toward the door.

“Do you hear me, Constable Morse?”

Morse turned and looked at him. For a moment, they just started at one another, as though each were a bit stunned by Thursday’s last.

 

“Loud and clear,” Morse said, with one last withering glare. Then looking at him as though he were the Inspector and Thursday an eccentric called in from France, he said, “We’ll have a talk later.”

 

Fancy blinked. He would have thought that if anyone would have struck such a note with DI Thursday, he might expect to see heads rolling across the floor.

But Thursday just grunted and slammed shut a file drawer that was half-hanging open, as he strode back to his office. Fancy turned and headed down through the aisles of desks, hurrying in Morse’s wake.

*********

Dr. DeBryn crouched at Ronald Beavis’ bedside. No obvious signs of violence. Poison perhaps?

 He was just contemplating the man’s complexion, to see if he might hazard a guess, when he heard DC Fancy and another familiar voice, low and soft, coming from up the stairs.

So, Strange had convinced Thursday after all.

Or perhaps he hadn’t. That certainly would account for that stricken look on Strange’s face when Thursday popped into the mortuary earlier that day.

 

“We meet again, Nayland Smith,” DeBryn said, as Morse sailed into the room.

Morse’s wide mobile mouth lifted in a smile.

“So? Who’s this then?” he asked, nodding to the body and looking between DeBryn and WPC Trewlove, who stood at attention by the door.

“Ronald Beavis,” supplied Trewlove. “Worked at the Pitt-Rivers, according to the landlady.”

“Doing what?” Morse asked.

“She doesn’t know.”

Morse turned to Fancy. “I’ll need you to get to the Pitt-Rivers. Find out what he did there. Speak to his colleagues. See what they made of him. Did he owe any money? Vice versa? Any rows? I could write a list for you if you’d like.”

Fancy looked at Trewlove incredulously, who smiled gently in return.

 

One could only be grateful Morse didn’t catch the exchange. He had evidently forgotten he was not their senior colleague.

 

 “Any next of kin?” Morse asked.

“Not as far as the landlady knows,” Trewlove said.  

“But he was found with another note?” Morse asked.

DeBryn unfolded the red paper and handed it to Morse.

 

 _“And like a soul belated/ In heaven and hell unmated/By cloud and mist abated/ comes out of darkness, morn,”_ he read. “Hmmmm,” he mused. “Swinburne.”  He tilted his head, as if running the lines over in his mind, and then looked back up at DeBryn. “You couldn’t have a turn through his pockets?” he asked.

DeBryn shrugged. “He won’t bite,” he said, indicating where the man’s dentures soaked in a glass on a bedside table.

Morse grimaced.  

DeBryn checked the man’s pockets and pulled out a silver watch engraved with an inscription. “Sgt. Ronald Beavis. Well done good and faithful servant," he read. “Looks like it was given to him at his retirement from the force.”

“He was ex-job?” queried Morse, a note of surprise ringing in his voice. 

“Apparently.”

“What do you make of it?” Morse asked

“Died between one and three in the night,” DeBryn said, heavily "That much is certain."

Trewlove nodded. “That would accord with what the landlady said. She thought she heard him banging about, making a racket. Then he went quiet. She didn’t think anything of it. He usually kept odd hours.”

“Poisoned perhaps?” Morse asked.

 “That is a possibility, yes," DeBryn said. "I’ll know more once I have his tripes in a tub. But it might not have taken much. Judging by the contents of his wastepaper basket, it looks as if his liver couldn’t handle much else.”

Morse raised his eyebrows.

“Three empty Scotch bottles,” he supplied in answer to Morse’s questioning look.

“Hmmm,” Morse said.

Morse began stalking about the narrow room, picking up one object after another. It certainly was a forlorn little place. An ornate tan and gold damask wallpaper, much too elaborate for the narrow room, created an effect almost enough to make one dizzy. Water stains on the ceiling and far wall, the single bulb lamp over the bed, the sad jumble of objects in the makeshift kitchen that must rarely have seen a meal prepared there more complicated than beans on toast—in short, it was the home of a man who didn’t seem to hope for much out of life.

“What are you looking for?” Fancy asked.

Morse picked up a newspaper and looked at it, scowling. Then, he tossed it back onto the table as if it gave off an electric current, one strong enough to shock. As it fell, DeBryn noticed that the paper was folded to a crossword puzzle, filled out in bold penciled block letters.

Then Morse picked up a record album and froze. He turned and held it up to DeBryn, brow furrowed, his blue eyes wide.

“Do you see this?” Morse asked.

DeBryn watched him uncertainly. “Yes," he replied.

"What is it?"

"It looks to be a record album," DeBryn said mildly.

“A Rosalind Calloway album?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“Yes,” the doctor confirmed.

Morse turned slowly, looking about amidst the clutter of the room, running his hand up and down his nape. “This is like a nightmare,” he said.

It certainly did seem to be one of those instances in which truth was stranger than fiction. A retired police officer with no family, living alone in a bedsit with only opera albums and crosswords—not to mention a seemingly endless supply of Scotch—for company. An odd coincidence, that Beavis’ tastes and habits should run so parallel to Morse’s. It didn’t take a leap of the imagination to realize that Morse might be seeing his own, one-time, inevitable future.

Abruptly, Morse came right alongside him, venturing close to the body where it lay, crooked and careless across the spartan, single bed. It was as close as DeBryn had ever seen him come near any corpse. Then, Morse absentmindedly traced his hand over his jaw, as if wanting to make sure that all of his teeth were still firmly planted in his mouth.

“Are you all right?” DC Fancy asked.

Morse just shook his head mutely in reply. Then, he managed, “I don’t know why I’ve come back here. This must be. . . it’s like a nightmare. I feel like I’m . . .”  

It looked as if his hand was trembling on his square jaw. His eyes flashed for a moment, impossibly wide and blue, his gaze falling on a book by the bedstead— a slim volume with a museum brochure hanging out over the top, as if it had been used as a bookmark.

It was a copy of A Shropshire Lad, and a brochure for an exhibit at the Pitt-Rivers of the Wolvercote Trove.

Morse picked the book up and pulled out the brochure, staring at it as if horrified, as if he expected the thing to burst into flames.

 

Well, that had to be the coup de grace. DeBryn remembered that Morse had been part of the investigation concerning the disappearance of the Wolvercote Trove four or five years ago. It was quite possible that he once had a very similar brochure tucked into a volume of Houseman on his bedside table, just as Ronald Beavis did.

DeBryn watched him closely.

 “I need . . . I need to go back to the nick,” Morse said, his voice still betraying a telltale tremble.   

 “You sure you’re all right?” Fancy asked.  

“Yes. I'm . . . I'm fine. I think I understand something. We’ve had it wrong. All wrong. But there’s something I need to check to be sure. Do we still have a mail room, at Thames Valley? Do you still have all sorts of cranks, writing in?”

Fancy laughed. “Yeah. We get everything from scraps of paper that say ‘Die pigs die’ to treatises as long as your arm.”

“Who’s in charge of all that?”

“Constable Tyler,” Fancy said.

“Oh, God,” Morse moaned, in a wail of despair. “He must hate me, surely.”

 

DeBryn looked at him sharply. Tyler hadn’t been brought on until long after Morse had left. Was this an instance of paranoia, perhaps?

 

But surprisingly, Fancy just laughed. “Yeah,” he agreed. “He sort of does. But don’t worry. He’s not a bad bloke, Tyler. I’ll go along with you. Sort of smooth things over.”

Morse looked as if he were not greatly heartened by the offer. Then, he turned to DeBryn.

“Oh, and he _has_ been poisoned. You’ll be wanting a full work up.” And with that, he spun on his heel and left, leaving DC Fancy looking utterly confused for a moment, before he followed Morse out the door.

 

DeBryn raised his eyebrows. That was certainly an odd little performance.

 

He had been wondering about Morse since he had left last summer. It had troubled him a bit, that he had backed down, acquiesced to Bixby’s request.

There was something about Morse that didn’t invite intrusion, but DeBryn had come to feel that if anyone other than Morse had said the things that he had, he would have considered it a professional duty to look further into it. It was his own complicated feelings he had once harbored toward Morse that led him to keep his distance.

 

_I could tell . . . that Thursday blames himself sometimes. . . for what’s wrong with me . . and, if I could solve the case.  .  . then maybe, he wouldn’t look at me like that . . . and we could all break away . . . finally leave that all behind, Morse said._

 

DeBryn wasn’t quite sure if he would bring the matter up. But if Morse happened to again, or if a moment like the one he had just witnessed arose while they were alone, this time DeBryn would think the better of letting the matter drop unquestioned. 

He had been reading in a medical journal that researchers at EMI were developing all sorts of new imaging systems, some of which were said to be available in the next few years. Morse was still quite young. If whatever it was that seemed to ring so discordantly about him was not simply psychological, but also physical . . . well then, who knows what might be possible for him in the future? 

But he certainly wouldn’t be able to find the right answers without having the right questions to start with. Inspector Thursday and this Joss Bixby fellow might find themselves blindsided by Morse . . . or Endeavour . . . but, he certainly wouldn't let him get him all turned about. 

Truly, he wouldn't. 

 

*********

Kay Belborough looked up from her menu, her blue eyes narrowing. “I can’t believe he has the nerve to show up here,” she said.

Tony turned in his chair to follow her gaze, only to see the relentlessly cheery, absolutely insufferable Jerome Hogg in the doorway of the club restaurant.

“Oh, God,” he groaned.

“He knows we’re members here,” she said.

“Just be careful he doesn’t take a table near us,” Tony said. “He’ll be hanging on our every word.”

“Odious little man,” she murmured, returning to her study of the menu. Then, she looked thoughtful for a moment.

“That one thing isn’t true, though, is it Tony? About his name? I know it seems a small thing, but nonetheless . . . “

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific," Tony said. 

“That little wager. You and Susan had. It’s all in that book. You can’t tell me you haven’t read it?”

“Of course I haven’t read the blasted thing.”

Kay raised her eyebrows. “Oh, well good for you,” she said loftily. Then she frowned. “Well, I have. I wanted to know what he had to say about all of us. Bruce is taking him to court, and for once in my life, I agree with him.” She paused, and though she was back to looking at her menu, her thoughts seemed to be thousands of miles away. “Tony?” she asked. “Do you ever think we should have . . . ?”

“No,” Tony said.

“You didn’t even give me a chance to . . . Oh, can you believe it? He’s coming over.”

 

This time, Tony refused to turn his head.

 

“Well hello, there,” Jerome Hogg said, stopping by their table. “What news?”

“Why don’t you tell us?” Kay said coldly. 

“All right, I will,” he laughed, pulling up a chair and making himself right at home. “You’ll never guess who has sent his butler down from London, assembling a staff to finish sprucing up a certain house on a certain lake next to a certain dear friend of ours’ parent’s house,” he said, with a nod to Tony at the last phrase. 

“Who?” Kay asked, looking at her menu as if she didn't much care. 

“A certain Joss Bixby, that’s who. One wonders if he might be bringing a certain friend of ours along in tow.”

Kay laughed. “Pagan’s certainly not your friend,” she said. “Seeing as how you’ve torn him to pieces in that wretched little book of yours.”

Jerome looked at her in mock shock. “I haven’t said a word against Pagan. It’s certainly not his fault that he’s led such a colorful life. Besides, he must not have a trouble with it. I haven’t been served any papers from _him_ about a lawsuit, unlike some people I could name.”

Tony refused to even look at the man. Instead, like Kay, he concentrated on his menu, as if Hogg were worth no more of his attention than an irritating insect. “He’s probably only barely aware the book exists, Jerome,” he said. 

“Oh, no,” Jerome said. “Even Pagan can’t have missed it. It’s everywhere.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily registering on his radar,” he replied.

“Oh, and you would know all about what does and doesn’t register on Pagan’s radar, I suppose, wouldn’t you Tony?”  he said.

Tony blinked. That’s was rather what old Bunny would have called a shot across the bow.

“Although it sounds as if, these days, even the lunar landing may have failed to escape his notice,” Hogg added. He laughed delightedly.

“There’s nothing funny about that,” Kay snapped.

“Goodness, Kay, dear. Didn’t your mother ever warn you against making faces like that? You’ll look sixty by the time you’re thirty-five. Ta, now.” And with that, he got up and left.

Kay considered his retreating back for a good long while. “I hate him,” she said.

Tony said nothing. He just kicked back a glass of Scotch, wondering if it might be true, wondering if Pagan might be returning to Oxford, right to Lake Silence. 

 

 *******

When Tony got back to his parents’ house, he made himself a good stiff drink and wandered out by the lake. He’d been staying there for the past month, helping his parents to sort out their affairs. His father’s memory had been slipping of late, and their papers were in a right state, even worse than his own.  

The moon was waxing to full, so bright that it was easy to imagine it was the sun, shining on the lake out by his aunt’s house, as it did back in the summer of 1957. When the world was green with leaves and not stark with barren branches against a blue-black darkening sky.

The sun had been white and clean and full of liquid summer, casting down brightly on Pagan’s hair, bringing out the threads of gold and copper in the bronze waves. It was just the two of them, that afternoon, out on the lake. Pagan leaned back on the oars, his head turned to watch the movement of the left oar in the rusted lock, when Tony took his chance.

He reached forward and brushed Pagan’s hair back, just tracing the edge of his jaw with the tips of his fingers. It was an innocent enough move, with just the suggestion of something more.

Pagan turned at once, his eyes like two wide blue headlights, looking infinitely startled.

So, Tony thought, his heart sinking a little.

Perhaps Susan had called it correctly after all.

 

“No?” Tony asked.

Pagan laughed, his face relaxing. “No,” he said.

Tony laughed, too. And it was all right. Pagan had seemed to sense something was in the offing, and now that it was out of the way, he was much more at ease around Tony, much happier. Tony didn’t take it personally. One was made to desire whom one was made to desire, after all. Tony had learned that much long ago.

And Pagan's friendship was its own reward. He was a definite burst of fresh air into that little hothouse in which he and his friends had been raised, their mothers plotting and arranging their marriages before they had scarcely left their cradles.

By the end of first year, Pagan seemed closer to him than anyone else in the group. It was Tony who first found out his real name, even before Susan.

And who knew? It was fairly clear Pagan hadn’t had a terrible amount of experience in life. It was quite possible he didn’t know what he wanted. He might change his mind. And when he did. . .

It didn’t seem particularly likely, but nor did it seem impossible.

 

What did seem impossible was for an utter fraud like Joss Bixby to swoop down, deux ex machina, and herd Pagan off to France. The man already had half the women at those blasted parties of his swooning under his dark, sultry gaze. Did he have to zoom in on Pagan, too?

And how could Pagan not realize what the man was? Was he that utterly lost?

The most painful thing about it all was that Tony had let it all happen. When Bixby ushered Pagan off with that suave smile, to "show him a painting," Tony let him go, laughed to himself and started chatting up some blonde whose name he could not even now remember. He knew by then that Pagan's passions were not inclined in that direction. He further knew that Pagan didn't suffer fools gladly. After about five minutes of conversation, he would be sure to send the man packing. 

Pagan had been in such a fey mood of late, drinking entirely too much Scotch. Sometimes, Tony was shocked and even a little embarrassed at his rudeness, at the things that seemed to just pop out of his mouth without any apparent forethought. That glib Bixby was about to meet his match, that much was certain.

But instead, something went terribly wrong, something had backfired. Because at the next party, when Tony found Pagan over at the bar, his blue eyes were trained steadily on Joss Bixby.

Bixby seemed to realize it, too. He stopped where he was in the crowd, glass in hand, and flashed that white smile, his dark eyes bright with the reflection of a hundred colored lights. 

Tony thought Pagan might look away, but he didn't. He just stared solemnly back. 

 

And how could Pagan not see it?  

How could he not see that Bixby was not to be trusted, was not who he claimed to be?

How could he not see that he, Tony, had been here, waiting for him to change his mind on that score, for all of these years?

 

He stopped walking and sat on a fallen log, stretching his legs out before him, looking over the water as the stars blinked on, one by one. He wasn’t quite sure what to wish for: whether it was true what Jerome Hogg had said, or that it wasn’t. He was not sure what he’d begin to say to Pagan, now, after all of these years.

  
Ah, well.

“But now since all is idle, to this lost heart be kind,” he murmured to Pagan, wherever it was he might be. “Ere to a town you journey where friends are ill to find.”

Then he drained the rest of his glass.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 . . .  In which Endeavour has a theory, Thursday and Nero have words, Jerome Hogg has a brush with death, George Fancy has a crack at his first undercover, and the boys have a catch-up at the Lamb and Flag . . .

 

 

Strange completed another form and separated the originals and the duplicates into three neat piles across his desk: one for white, one for pink, and one for yellow. 

He was just tearing off a set along the perforated line when Thursday sauntered over, his pipe clenched firmly in the corner of his mouth, carrying a set of documents in need of filing. 

“Here you go, Sergeant,” Thursday said, depositing the papers on his desk. “But, first, I’m going to need you to get over to the Pitt-. . ."

“Sergeant Strange! Sir!” called DC Fancy, as he came hurrying through the aisles of desks.

 

Alone.

 

He hadn’t lost Morse already, had he?

Thursday removed the pipe from the corner of his mouth and said sharply, “Where’s Morse?”

“He’s over by the door to the back stairwell,” Fancy said. He looked to Strange, “He’s wondering if you’ll come down to the mail room with us.”

Strange sorted the papers in his hand. “The mail room?" he asked. "What’s he want the mail room for?”

“He thinks there’s something down there, I suppose," Fancy shrugged.

“I’m up to my elbows in it,” Strange said. “Can’t you take him down?”

Fancy cast a cautious look about the room and lowered his voice, “I think he’s afraid of Constable Tyler, and since you outrank him that . . .”

Strange rolled his eyes and pushed his chair back.

Thursday chuckled, suddenly looking delighted. “Better step to, sergeant.” 

 

 “Sir,” Fancy said, addressing Thursday, “Morse also said that we should call the Pitt-Rivers, to see if any items from the Wolvercote Trove might be missing.”

Thursday’s usually impassive face registered a trace of surprise.

“What makes him say that?” he said shortly.

“I dunno,” Fancy said. “That’s just what he said.”

“Huh,” Thursday replied. “Well, maybe he is the Oracle of Delphi after all. That was Professor Copley-Barnes just now, on the telephone. He called in to report that some items from the Wolvercote Trove had gone wandering again. You would think he’d be able to keep a hold of that stuff for at least five years running. . .”

“Should I head over, sir? To the Pitt-Rivers?” Strange asked.

“I think Fancy can handle it,” Thursday said. “You’re needed in the mail room after all. Tyler and Morse. Sounds like you’re in for a real treat.”

“Sir,” Strange said.

********

Strange couldn’t help but wonder: Why was Thursday so adverse to bringing Morse in on the case?

Something was out of kilter with him, that was for certain.

When Strange had brought Thursday’s suitcase over to the hospital, the Inspector had looked sheepish; he must have realized, no doubt, that Strange had seen the state of his house. He muttered something about Mrs. Thursday having gone to see her sister, but Strange would wager that there was a bit more to it than that. If that were the case, he doubts the old man would have let the place go to wrack and ruin as he had—he’d feel it was a point of pride to keep the house together in readiness for her return.

Perhaps Morse might help on that score, too.

 

At the end of the hallway, Strange found Morse waiting where Fancy had said he would be, standing by the door, arms folded, looking as though he were preparing to walk through fire.

Strange nodded to the door to the back stairs with a jerk of his head. “It’s this way, Morse.”

 “All right,” Morse said. 

 

There was bound to be something in the mailroom Morse was after. And then Thursday would have to admit, whether he wanted to or not, that his instincts were spot on, in brining Morse in.

*******************************

 

Down and down and down. Turning on one landing and then another. How big this place was. The high ceilings above sizzled with sharp lines of harsh florescent lights, buzzing with a sound worse than a pestilence. Endeavour was quite tempted to cover his ears.

How many flights of steps had they descended so far? Down and down to where Constable Tyler sat, waiting and, no doubt, plotting an elaborate revenge, like a spider in the center of its web.

Endeavour was Orpheus, descending into the netherworld, into shadows of forgotten hopes. He was Dante, hurdling head-first through the rings of the Inferno.

 

“No wonder it was overlooked,” Endeavour said, at last. “How big is this place? Are we going all the way to where Judas Iscariot is entombed in a sphere of ice?”

“What’s that, matey?” Strange asked.

Endeavour sighed. “I said, ‘it’s no wonder you’ve overlooked it. Your armpit doesn’t know what your arse is doing in this hellhole.’”

Strange stopped on the stairs and turned to look at him. “Well, _I_ didn’t design it like this, matey. You needn’t tell me that.”

“I know,” Endeavour said, softly.  "Sorry.”

He hadn’t meant to let loose his pent-up terror on Strange. After all, _he_ hadn’t told him that he was a bloody . . . whatever it was that Thursday had stopped himself from saying. 

 

He never should have come here. Strange had made it sound as if Thursday was upon death’s door, driven to overwork—but for a man who smoked four or five pipes a day and who once coughed up a bullet, his lungs seemed as strong as a bull’s; he certainly had the strength to bellow at him, at any rate. Why was he so angry? 

Endeavour had given his fir cones away less than a month ago, and already here he was, right back at Thames Valley, being called Morse around the clock. He thought Max at least might have called him Endeavour. But perhaps he was right; perhaps Max had thought it was better not to appear too casual in front of their junior colleagues.

As soon as Joss came to fetch him at half seven or so, he’d tell him it was all a false alarm, all a mistake, and that he was ready to go home.

 

Finally, it seemed as if they were reaching the bottom floor. Endeavour put a hand up to his head to put his sunglasses on, but then stopped, remembering he had the sunglasses on the last time he had met Tyler. This time, Bixby's sunglasses would make him more, rather than less, recognizable.

 

“Do we have to tell him who I am?” Endeavour asked, following Strange in through a door. But Strange didn’t hear him.

And it would have all been pointless, anyway. Endeavour had been smoothing his hair down manically, trying to alter his appearance, but it was clear from the look on DC Tyler's face that he recognized him right away.

“Oh, look,” he said. “‘ _Inspector_ _Morse_.’ How goes it then? “Is the ‘International Division’ in need of retrieving any more satchels out of evidence? If it is, I’m afraid you’re on the wrong floor.”

Endeavour laughed, trying to pretend as if it had all just been a private joke between them. That always worked for Bixby: his flash of a white smile, his cascade of a warm laugh. “Yes,” Endeavour said, “Wasn’t that funny?”

“Oh, yes,” Constable Tyler said. “I was laughing all the way to the disciplinary review board meeting.”

“All right then, Constable,” Strange said. “Enough of that now. Morse is here to look for something about that string of homicides we’ve had the last few weeks and we . . .” Strange paused. “What is it you are looking for, then?”

“A letter sent in. With another quote on red paper? It might have been sent in a month ago.”

"All right, then. Right this way,  _Inspector Morse_ ,” Tyler said, indicating another long, narrow hallway, topped with more buzzing florescent lights.

Endeavour swallowed and followed him.

******

“We’ve a bit of a backlog, as you can see,” Tyler said, a trace of satisfaction in his voice. “The dead-letter office is the lowest priority, and since we’ve centralized now, they whole bloody lot of it comes straight here.”

It was overwhelming: a long sorting table brimming with an ocean of paper, enough almost to drown in.

Endeavour and Strange exchanged glances, but the sergeant merely shrugged, nonplussed. “Well, let’s get to it then.”

Jim Strange began going through envelopes, but Constable Tyler only stood there in the corner, arms folded, watching them, just like a prison guard.

 

“Well, you might think to help,” Endeavour wanted to say. But he was afraid of rankling the man further.  

 

And anyway, they didn’t need him.  Because Strange was staring at an envelope, looking stunned.

“It’s here,” he said, holding out a red paper. “Can’t make head nor tails of this one, though.”

He handed it to Endeavour, who took it and read:   

_The First Moevere of the cause above,_

_What he first made the faire Cheyne of love he bond . . ._  

 

******************

Endeavour lay the red paper messages and the photographs in a line across Strange’s desk.

“We’ve been looking at the wrong lines and the wrong murders,” he said, his words coming at a rush.

“How's that?” Thursday asked.

“The notes don’t apply to the victim with which they were found, but rather are warnings about the _next_ murder,” he said. "The note that was found with Simon Myette, the first victim, for example, doesn’t correlate with him. There was a note that was mailed into the station _before_ that; the postmark on the envelope shows it was sent in a full month ago, a week before Myette was found dead in his café.”

“It’s this note,” Endeavour said, holding up the paper Strange had found in the mailroom, “that serves as a warning of his murder.”

“And, also,” he continued. “It’s not the lines _given_ in the notes that are the key. It’s the lines that _follow_. It’s a pattern: The next lines in the verse correspond to the next murder.”

 

“Like a puzzle, then?” Thursday asked. “Next line, next victim?"

 

“Yes,” Endeavour said. “For instance, the lines in the note sent into the mail room read:

‘ _The First Mover of the cause of above, When he first made the fair chain of love, he bound . . .’_

The lines after that run,  _‘The fire, the air, the water and the land, in certain boundaries, that they may not flee.’_ It's a passage from Chaucer, sir. The fair chain of love was a popular idea in medieval cosmology, explaining the order of things. It’s the idea that each thing has its own place in the hierarchy of the world, from the smallest flower to the hand of God.”

 

“What’s that got to do with a Jamaican café owner, though?” Strange asked.

Endeavour paused for a moment, looking down the long line of papers and photographs. He could see it so clearly.

But how to explain?

 

“When you put it all together,” he says, “I’m convinced it must be Cromwell Ames who is behind this, not Eddie Nero. After all, Nero is old news, you said. It’s Ames who wants a bit of flash, to make a name for himself. And, Simon Myette, like Cromwell Ames is West Indian. It’s possible that Cromwell Ames expected a degree of loyalty from him as a fellow immigrant, a degree that Myette was not prepared to give. You said Myette had no criminal record, no financial problems or known enemies, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Strange confirmed.

“It’s likely, he refused to be a part of whatever pyramid Ames had hoped to create, he broke with what order of things—the fair chain of love—that Ames expected.”

 

He stopped and waited for Strange and Thursday’s nod to go on.

 

“So,” Endeavour continued, “The note found with Myette, the one with a passage from the Odyssey, applies not to Myette, but to Harold Newby, the lorry driver, who was killed a week or so later. ' _Just look how Zeus has covered the wide sky with clouds, stirred up the sea with stormy blasts from different winds, swooping down upon me. . .  my sheer destruction is beyond all doubt.”_

“Well, how does that follow?” Strange asked.

“Well, what’s a lorry jacking but a modern-day shipwreck, the vessel left empty?" Morse asked. "But more telling: It was Killoran whiskey that was stolen, correct? On the label of a bottle of Killoran is a picture of a . . . .”

“. . . a schooner on rough water,” Strange completed.

 

Endeavour nodded and moved the next red paper down to the next photograph, that of Stephen Lane. “The note found with Newby, which reads, _“Rest you fair, good signor! Your worship was the last man in our mouths,_ ” apply then, to the next victim, the cab driver, Stephen Lane. 

“The next lines from the Merchant of Venice are, “ _Shylock, albeit I neither lend now borrow/By taking nor by giving of excess. /Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, /I’ll break a custom.”_

“Those lines are spoken by Antonio,” Endeavour continued. “He enters into a bargain with Shylock, a man who detests him. He takes a loan to help his friend, Bassanio.

“The agreement is: if Antonio doesn’t pay back the money he borrows, Shylock is entitled to a pound of Antonio’s flesh. When Antonio’s ventures fail, and he can’t repay his debt, Shylock insists that Antonio keep to the agreement, and he demands that a pound of flesh be extracted from near Antonio’s heart.”

 

Endeavour had been worried that he had been speaking too quickly, in too much of a panic--he was afraid that Strange and Thursday would lose the thread he was following, that they'd begin to look at him that way. But instead, they grew solemn and exchanged dark glances.  

 

“What is it?” Endeavour asked.  

“Stephen Lane. The cabbie. The stabbing wound it was particularly vicious,” Thursday said.

“DeBryn said it looked almost as if someone had tried to cut out his heart,” Strange said.

 

Endeavour let out a cry of surprise. “And you didn’t think to tell me that detail? You said he was ‘stabbed in the chest.’ If you had told me the man’s _heart_ was almost cut out I would have matched it to Merchant of Venice immediately. It’s hardly a forgettable plot point.”

 

Then Endeavour took a deep breath. “I think you’ll find Stephen Lane owed some money to Ames, perhaps even that he took what he owed to Ames and lent it out to someone else, trying to get some questionable ventures of his own going. I’d talk to some of his colleagues, neighbors. See what they made of him.”

 

“And then,” Endeavour said. “The Beowulf passage found with Stephen Lane. That was meant to warn of the murder of Ronald Beavis.

“The lines after the ones provided in the note refer to a dragon who hoarded treasure: “ _Wiglaf lunged at the enemy lower down, so that his decorated sword sank into the dragon’s belly._

 

“Trewlove said that Beavis worked at the Pitt-Rivers—where the  Wolvercote Trove is currently on exhibit. Beavis must have stolen a few articles, some ‘Anglo-Saxon treasure,’on commission from Ames, and perhaps later decided to sell his goods elsewhere.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. DeBryn finds he’s been poisoned, most likely with something that causes a stabbing pain to the stomach.”

 

 

Thursday was looking at him oddly. “That sounds completely . . . “

Endeavour cut in immediately; he didn’t want him to say that word. “Of course it does.  It’s terribly baroque. Almost ridiculously so.”

 

In fact, it reminded Endeavour of just the sort of thing that. . . “It’s like something someone from one of the colleges would come up with,” he said.

“You think there’s a connection between all _this_ and the _colleges_ , then?” Thursday asked, an incredulous note unmistakable in his voice.

Endeavour frowned. Thursday had always been the one who believed in him, before. “It’s not my place to say sir,” he said, tersely. 

“Don’t give me the old acid, it doesn’t suit,” Thursday snapped.

 

Endeavour shrugged. “Well,  _Has_ there been anything untoward happening at any of the colleges?” he asked.

Thursday regarded him grimly for a moment and said, “Two sudden deaths at Lonsdale. Tainted Chinese heroin.”

Endeavour blinked. “Why didn't you tell me that?”

Strange and Thursday said nothing.

“Ames has a connection. With someone at the colleges, then. Possibly Lonsdale. Whoever it is, is helping Ames market his wares to the students. And with these little flourishes,” he added, picking up one of the red papers.

“What’s the unknown partner receiving in return?” Endeavour asked. “I don’t know. Money perhaps? Perhaps it’s someone who’s merely disgruntled? Can’t make tenure and wants to strike back somehow?  If this is the sort of rubbish he’s playing around with, his career must surely be going to the dogs.”

 

The phone on Strange’s desk began to ring. Strange picked it up, but his end of the conversation wasn’t terribly insightful. “Yeah,” he said, and “Yeah,” And “All right.”

When he hung up the receiver, Strange said. “There’s been a shoot-out in front of Eddie Nero’s boxing club. A man is dead there on the sidewalk.”

“Christ,” Thursday said. “In the middle of the afternoon?”

Endeavour went to fetch his coat from off of the back of Strange’s chair.

 

“Where do you think you’re going, Morse?” Thursday asked. 

Oh, not this again.

“With you,” Endeavour said. “To the boxing club.”

“Oh, no,” Thursday said. “We don’t need you around Eddie Nero’s place. Strange and I will head out, and then we’ll fetch you to go over to make our inquires at Lonsdale.”

 

Lonsdale? Had Thursday lost his senses?

 

“I’m not going to Lonsdale,” Endeavour said, matter-of-factly.

“Why not?” Thursday asked, frowning.  

“I don’t want to go to Lonsdale.”

Thursday looked exasperated. “But it’s there you might be of some help to us.”

Endeavour laughed. “Oh, I shouldn’t think so. I’d just be underfoot there. A tremendous distraction, I would have thought.”

Thursday rolled his eyes and shook his head, casting his greatcoat on over his shoulders. “Fine,” he snorted. “Fine.”

“Fine,” Endeavour said.

 

And then, Endeavour could scarcely believe it. They actually started to leave without even asking . . .

 _“Though one were strong as seven, he too with death shall dwell,_ ” Endeavour called after them.

Thursday and Strange both stopped and turned, looking at him in confusion.

“It’s the next lines. Of the poem found with Ronald Beavis.  _“Though one were strong as seven, he too with death shall dwell, nor wake with wings in heaven, nor weep with pains in hell.”_ You’re going to a boxing club, isn’t that right? See if they fit what’s with happened. We’ll see who’s barmy, then.”

Thursday’s face darkened again. “I never said you were. . . Oh, never mind. Just stay right here Constable, until I tell you otherwise."

“Sir,” Endeavour said.

And with that, he and Strange left.

 

Endeavour sat behind Strange’s typewriter and got to work. It wasn’t as if being a detective was his real job. But how he was supposed to work on a poem in this terror of a place was beyond imagining. He was sure that group of constables over in the corner had been looking at him askance. If only he could tune it all out for a while, have some peace and just be Josephine.

But that wouldn’t do. Thursday might be calling soon with questions about the next note. They were bound to find one, after all.

He took a piece of paper from Strange’s drawer and cranked it into the typewriter.

**************

“Sir,” Strange said, pointing to a wall outside the boxing club. "What's this?" 

Thursday looked to where Strange had indicated. On the wall was a poster, advertising an upcoming fight, featuring photographs of two boxers: Bill “The Cat” Lyons and Duke Anderson, who was proclaimed to be “As Strong As Seven Men.”

“What was that, Morse said, sir? ' _Though one were strong as seven?'_ ”  Strange asked.

Thursday groaned. Maybe that detail never need be shared with Morse. The lad would be certain to give him what for. By God, he was in a stroppy mood. Seemed ready to jump right out of his skin, he did.

 

“Come on then, Sergeant," Thursday said.

“Sir,” Strange said.

****************

 

Thursday stood with Eddie Nero over the corpse of Duke Anderson, while officers in uniform swarmed the street, analyzing the logistics of the shots. It was as if Oxford had become the bloody Wild West, just as Strange had said. 

 

“All right Eddie, start taking then,” Thursday said. 

“This has naught to do with me, Fred. I wouldn’t off Duke. He was one of my best boxers. Brought in his weight worth’s in ticket sales.”

“He’s bound to have been involved in something. Let’s have it,” Thursday said.

Nero said nothing, looking stubborn.

“Look here, Eddie.,” Thursday said. “This is turning into a proper Watney Street knees-up. It’s only a matter of time before an innocent bystander cops it. I can’t have that on the street. You want whoever’s at it out of your hair, we want them banged up.”

“I’m no grass,” Nero snarled.

“I know,” Thursday said knowingly. “I know. Honor amongst. But this ain’t grassing.”

Nero hesitated.

“Whatever you got,” Thursday prompted. “Smallest thing.”

“All right,” he said. “Follow me then.”

Nero led Thursday and Strange back into a dim locker room, a stagnant fug of sweat and cigarette smoke. Nero opened one metal locker door with a bang. “Duke told me he’d been approached by someone from Ames’ lot a week or so ago. He told them he was already fixed where he was. Then, this morning, he finds this in his locker. Some Spanish rubbish.”

He handed Thursday a red piece of paper. Thursday took one look at it, and memories of a different war came flooding back.

The note was in Italian. He held the paper up and read: “Many of the devil’s vices once heard I at Bologna. . . ”

“There a phone I could use, Eddie?”  he asked.

 

“Many of the devil’s vices once I heard at Bologna,” Morse repeated. “'And among them that he’s a lie and the father of lies.' It's Dante." 

“Huh,” Thursday said. “What do you make of that?”

Morse laughed ruefully. “You said you were going over to Lonsdsale after, weren’t you? That’s where I’ve encountered most of the frauds and liars I've met in my life. I’d say you’re headed in the right direction.”

Thursday raised his brows in surprise at that. He had always known that Morse liked to keep mum about his years at Oxford, but he hadn’t realized he was so bitter about the place.

Of course, he had never really talked to him about that business with Edmund Corcoran and Henry Winter. Hadn’t had the time when it all broke loose. The next time he had gone out to that little lake house, Morse had cleared out, leaving the place empty, with naught but bright specks of dust floating and spiraling before the old thick windows. By the time he ran into him again, at the college, so much time had passed, it seemed wrong, somehow, to bring the subject up. 

“You sure you won’t come with us over to Lonsdale?” Thursday asked.

“I’m sure,” Morse said.  

 

*****************

Well, that had to be it.

In a large, bright office at Lonsdale—one lined from floor to ceiling with books and with wide windows looking out over the quad—Thursday and Strange met with George Chamberfield and two of his younger associates, Alexander Reece . . .  and Jerome Hogg.

Morse was most likely right, then, Thursday thought. He couldn't begin to imagine how any interaction between Morse and Hogg might go— but however it went, it would be sure to take them far from the matter at hand. 

Chamberfield greeted them, shaking their hands.

“We were hoping to talk to you for a bit, and your collegues too, if they can spare the time,” Thursday said. 

“Of course, Inspector.”

“Actually, I was just leaving,” Hogg said.

Chamberfield cut him a look. “I’m sure you can give the Inspector ten minutes, Jerome.”

“Well, actually, I’m late for . . . “

“I’m sure your promotional agent can wait,” Chamberfield intoned sternly. 

“Or your lawyer,” Reece said, an air of laughter in his voice.

Hogg cast an annoyed glance at Reece before nodding to Chamberfield. “Very well then, sir,” Hogg said.

 

“We got the toxicology reports in on the two students: Mark Ashley and Jack Hutchens. It seems like they both got a hold of the same bad batch of Chinese heroin,” Thursday said.

Chamberfield bowed his head, rubbed his eyes with one long, lean hand and sighed. “I suspected as much. That drugs might be involved.”

“Any ideas as to where they may have come by the stuff? Seen anyone odd about the college? Overheard any of the students’ gossip?” Thursday asked. 

“No, nothing that I can think of that might be pertinent," Chamberfield said. "Just seems to be the way of the world, these days, doesn't it?"

 

Thursday couldn’t help but replay Morse’s words in his mind. If there _was_ a connection between Ames and someone at the colleges, then it might be possible . . .

 

“Do you know if anyone here might have received any letters written on red paper? A literary quote, perhaps?” he asked. 

Jerome Hogg frowned at this. “Well, I have,” he said. “Just today. Someone left the thing right on my desk. Hadn't the foggiest notion what the damn . . . “

 

Just then, a tremendous explosion shook the walls of the office, sending a number of books tipping off of their shelves and crashing to the floor.

 

After the room went still, the five men rushed to the window. Outside, a car was aflame, quickly being reduced to a smoldering heap.

 

Hogg let out a cry of despair. “That was my new Porsche!” 

“I call that a very bad show,” Reece said.

“I was just heading off,” Hogg continued, his voice an octave higher than what seemed natural. “If you hadn’t stopped me to talk, I  . . . then. . . "

“Professor Hogg?” Thursday said sharply, “Is there any one who would want to do you harm?”

Alexander Reece laughed merrily. “Oh, dear. The question is who _doesn’t_ wish Jerome harm these days? Why the list just goes on and on.”

 

*******************

Cromwell Ames had had enough. His man with the police and his man at the colleges had not failed to disappoint, but the frontman he had recruited to pull in investors for his real estate plans had proved to be utterly incompetent. Oh, he had managed to line them up readily enough, but one by one, almost all of them had slipped away, begged off of making the final deal. 

 

Land. That’s what mattered in England. Land gave you a name. Land always held its value.

The posh set were all of them unreliable to a man. So protected by their precious status quo, by a class system set in stone for centuries. They could say yes one day and no the next, without any repercussions whatsoever.

Well not this time.

He had decided to start with the slipperiest fish in the sea.

“You English are all the same,” Ames told him. “You think you can back down on your promises and not pay a reckoning. You think you are protected by your wealth, your titles, your status. But you’re careless. There’s a whole new world out there, a whole other hemisphere, where a man isn’t what he’s born to. It’s what he makes of himself. You don’t have the first clue what it takes to start from nothing and build an empire for yourself. . . "

And then he paused, for just the briefest of moments, before adding,. . .  “Or maybe you do . . . don’t you, Mississippi?”

But the man only laughed. “That’s all terribly interesting, but I’m afraid what I said still stands. You’ll have to do better than, that, old man. Who, might I ask, is this, by the way?”

Ames smiled.  “ _And Josiah walked with the Lord_ ,’ he quoted, letting the disdain drip from his voice. “Well my name is Cromwell Ames and the devil walks with me. And I have come to set a fire on the cane.”

“Well,” Joss Bixby said, laughing warmly now. “I’ll say this for you. You do have a certain brand of theatre about you. Not sure how far threats will get you, but I suppose you might give it a shot.”

 

And then, that nobody from nowhere actually hung up on him. 

 

**********

DC Fancy was heading back to the nick with a catalog of items missing from the Wolvercote Trove, when he decided to take the long route, through the Brennan Street Market.

He'd gone only halfway down the crowded street, when he noticed a stall selling second-hand records, just like the one Trewlove had described. He approached the vendor and asked, “Lloyd Bridges?”

The big man looked at him sharply. “Who wants to know?”

Fancy shrugged, as if it was all the same to him. “I heard you might be the man to talk to.”

“About what now?” he asked. 

“About where a man can get his hands on some decent Scotch.”

“Where did you hear that?” asked the man.

"Just around, in the market," Fancy said. 

“No, man,” the man said. “I got nothing for you.”

Fancy decided to change tactics. He ran his hand through his hair and thought of speaking to Morse earlier that day, of his plummier accent.

“Come now, help a fellow out, won’t you? I’ve got a party, you see. At college. And I’ve got to get the bar stocked."

“At college, you say?” the man asked. 

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Leave me your number,” he said. “I'll see what I can do.”

Fancy left him the number to his flat, trying to hide his elation. His first undercover hadn’t gone half bad.

 *********************

Back at the nick, Fancy found Chief Superintendent Dawkins standing over Morse, who sat with this head lying on Strange’s desk, sunglasses tangled in his unruly hair, absolutely dead to the world.

“Fancy!” Dawkins barked. “Who in the hell is this?”

“Constable Morse, sir.”

 _Constable_ Morse?" he said. He cast Morse a disapproving look. “Not that barmy poet. What’s he doing here?”

“Str. . . Th . . . He was called in to take a look at those messages, sir.”

“So, I see,” he huffed angrily, indicating the toss of papers strewn carelessly across Strange’s desk. “When you see Thursday, tell him I want to talk to him about this.”

“Sir,” Fancy said.

 

Didn’t matter to him one way or the other. The Chief Superintendent had told him to tell Thursday, _when he saw him_. That was not likely to be until tomorrow. Because he was going off shift now, anyway. 

Fancy went into the office and deposited the catalog on Thrusday’s desk. Then he picked up the phone to call downstairs.

“This is Fancy, calling off shift at as of 17 . .” he glanced at his watch. “31. That’s right. Thank you.”  

He was no fool. If another row was coming between Strange and Thursday over this, or worse, between Thursday and Dawkins, he was going to get off the field of battle.

"Night, Morse," Fancy said as he left.

Amazing, it was, that the bloke could sleep through all that. Many the time was that he wished he could sleep right through Dawkins' tirades himself. 

***************

Thursday could only pray that Morse, for once in his life, did as he was told.

A man writes a sordid biography about him, the police come across a note signaling that some harm might come to a so-called “father of lies,” and then the man's car blows up? Sitting in a nick full of police officers was the best alibi Morse could hope for.

He and Strange were almost back to the station, when Thursday saw Bixby approaching from the other direction, striding along in his black wool coat.  It wasn’t right that a man should be looking so happy on a day cold enough to suck the warmth right out of your body, on a day cold enough to freeze you to the marrow of your bones, but that was Bix for you. Thursday wasn't sure if he was in the mood for the man right at the moment. 

“Hello, Inspector!” he called out.

“’Lo, Bix,” Thursday replied, shortly.

“Endeavour crack your case for you yet?” Bixby asked.

“He’s set us on the right track, I think,” said Strange, staunchly. 

 

Well, the lad was entitled to one I-told-you-so, Thursday supposed. 

 

“I don’t think we’ve met, old man,” Bixby said, pulling a hand out of his pocket and holding it out to Strange. “Joss Bixby.”

“Jim Strange,” Strange replied.

“Ah,” he said, as if this was all satisfactory. “Yes. We spoke on the phone, I believe.”

Thursday snorted at that. Two guesses as to whom they might have had words about. Well, enough of this cozy catch up.

“We better just hope Morse stayed put up in the nick, like I told him. Strange and I have just come back from Lonsdale. Jerome Hogg’s car has just been blown sky high.”

Bixby’s tanned face registered a note of surprise. "Oh, what a shame," he said. “Tell me, was he in it at the time?”

“No,” Thursday said. “He wasn’t. But it’s not funny, all the same." 

“Well, I don’t wish the man dead, but if his car got blown up, then, yes, it’s a little bit funny," Bixby said. 

Thursday grunted a reply and pushed open the heavy glass doors.

 

Miraculously, Morse was there, his head lying flat on Strange's desk, his sunglasses perched crookedly in his hair, and his mouth half-hanging open, fast asleep. 

“Morse,” Thursday said. “Morse!”

Morse slept on.

“That won’t work,” Bixby said. Then he called down to Morse. “Hey, Josephine?”

Morse stirred.  “Hmmmmm… ?”

That was _it_. Thursday had no patience for Bixby today, especially for this ridiculous Josephine business. “Don’t call him that,” Thursday snapped. “Especially not in the nick. This is serious place of work.”

But Bixby only laughed. “Well, it woke him up, did it?”

Morse was blinking at the desk, looking confused as to what the hell he was doing there. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Must be the jet lag.”

“Nice try,” Bixby said. “We’re only one hour off.”

“Yes, wake up, Morse,” Thursday said. “I’ve a note for you.”

“Hmmmm? What’s it say? Where did you find it?”

The “father of lies” appears to have referred to Jerome Hogg. He told us of a note he had found in his office just seconds before his car blew sky high. We’ve had to call the bomb squad out to survey the place. I’m glad you stayed here, like I said.”

“You wanted me to go to Lonsdale,” Morse said.

“What’s that?”

“I said, 'you wanted me to go to Lonsdale.' I was the one who wanted to stay here." 

 

So damn stroppy, Morse was today, so contrary about every little thing.

 

“Well, you did, actually, sir,” Strange said quietly.

“Well,” Thursday sputtered, "I changed my mind, didn’t I? Told you to stay put, right here. And a good thing, too. Being here in the middle of the nick, surrounded by officers, you couldn’t ask for a better alibi."

“ _Alibi?"_ Morse asked. "Why would I need an alibi?”

Even Morse couldn’t be that obtuse. "A man writes a tell-all book about you, we get a note calling someone “the father of lies,” and then the man's car explodes? You’ve got a clear motive, haven’t you?”

Morse laughed at that. “I don’t care about that inane book. It isn’t even about me. It’s about some _idea_ he has about me. It’s not even me on the cover.”

Thursday blinked at that. “It isn’t?’” he asked.

It sure as hell _looked_ just like him. He glanced over at Bixby for confirmation, but Bixby only rolled his eyes and slightly shook head, as if he’d had that argument before and it was pointless stumbling into it again. 

“Of course not,” Morse continued.  “I don’t recall that photo ever having been taken. And I’ve never looked as stupid as that poor sod on the cover, I’m sure. It doesn’t look anything like me.” He yawned widely midway through the last sentence and stretched. "Let's see the note, then.”

Morse read, " _A moi. L'historie d'une de mes folies_." He looked at the paper for a moment. "For a long time I boasted of possessing every possible landscape, that . . .  ," he murmured.

The next line, the next victim. _I boasted of possessing every possible landscape._ Someone with land, Endeavour thought. Someone who has just what Ames wants? 

 

Then he looked up at Thursday, handing him back the paper. "I think it must be . . .  someone, or someones, perhaps, who Ames feels has done him wrong in a real estate scheme." 

"Real estate? What with all the new development in the city? God, that could be any wheeler dealer in Oxford," Thursday said.

"I suppose. Should make your job tomorrow easier tomorrow, though," Morse said. 

Thursday snorted. "How do you figure that?"  

"Well, a lot of the people who have money to invest in such a thing are the same ones who have probably made an appearance in that book, would have cause to want to get back at Jerome Hogg, aren’t they?”

“Oh,” Thursday said. That did make sense.

“I’ll write you a list in the morning if you like,” Morse said. 

 

“Do you think there’s time?" Strange asked. "These things have been moving pretty quickly.”

Morse nodded thoughtfully. "I've been thinking about that. Three murders over the course of several weeks, and now, today, three incidents in a single day? It's almost as if . . . " 

"Almost as if what?" Thursday prompted. 

Morse looked troubled for a moment, but then shook his head lightly, as if tossing the thought away. "No. Never mind. I was just being stupid." 

Thursday huffed a laugh at that. "That’s the one thing you’re not, I would say.”

Morse's eyes widened in surprise, but he looked pleased all the same. 

 

What’s this? Surely the lad knew that much.

 

It had been a long while since he had worked with Morse on something; on the Finch case, Morse had shot off on his own before Thursday could rein him in. Thursday had forgotten how the lad could doubt himself, despite his seeming veneer of insolence, had forgotten how he glowed under the slightest praise. “Been right about everything else today, haven't you?" Thursday said. "Out with it, then." 

"No," Morse mused. "It can't be so."

Then he shrugged, as if shifting gears. "But I think, at any rate that this might be the lull we need, our chance to catch up.  All of the people targeted so far have worked and lived largely out in public eye . . . . Jerome was a bit more difficult to reach; they had to settle for trying to get to him in the car park. If it's a lapsed investor they are threatening next . . . well, that person will be more cloistered, more difficult to access, most likely. We can make up a list for first thing tomorrow down at the pub. Come on, get your coats. You too, Strange.”

Strange looked alarmed at the suggestion. “Well, actually, I’ve a date tonight.”

“Have you really?” Morse said. “Or are you just saying that because I always used to skive off paying my round? I do have money now, you know.”

“It’s not that, it’s . . . “

“Who are you going out with, then?”

“Endeavour,” Bixby said. “If the sergeant doesn’t want to answer, you needn’t pry.”

“I’m not prying. I’m simply asking," Morse said. 

Thursday decided he owed Strange one.

“All right then, Sergeant. See in the morning. Mind how you go.”

"Sir," Strange said with a nod, and then he hustled out of the station as if he were late to catch a train.  

*****

In the end, Morse’s pointed questions were just too difficult to dodge.

And in the end, it wasn’t as difficult as he had thought it would be, to finally say it.

“Win left me,” Thursday said. “And that’s the truth of it.”

On the other side of the heavy wooden booth, one pair of sharp dark eyes and a pair of wide blue ones regarded him solemnly, without a note of surprise.

So Strange had shared his suspicions, then. No wonder the sergeant was keen to get the hell out of the nick, if he sensed Morse was going to lead the conversation in this direction.

Thursday hadn't thought he would be able to say it out loud. But somehow, admitting the fact to Morse and Bixby—to himself—allowed something to ease within him.

He'd not been without Win since he'd gotten back from the war. Without her, he felt like a gear ground to a halt, like an empty grate without a fire. He'd been carrying the knowledge around with him like a sharp pain, just under his heart, for so long that he had ceased to notice it. 

 

“Why?” Morse asked, simply, after a quiet pause.

Thursday took a long draught of his ale and looked into the fire burning merrily in the hearth. 

“I loaned some money to my brother Charlie. Well, all of it, really. Our life’s savings. He promised to have it back to me before Christmas, but, well, it’s gone.”

“What do you mean _gone?_ ” Bixby asked.

Thursday shrugged. He didn’t want to go into the details, especially not with Bixby, who might know all too well the disreputable ways in which money might simply disappear.

“And you didn’t tell Mrs. Thursday,” Morse said, rather than asked. 

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Why?" Thursday asked. "Don’t you think I haven’t been asking myself that these past few weeks?

“Sorry.”

“’ts not your fault. I suppose I knew she wouldn’t have liked it. But what else could I have done? He’s family."

 Morse looked uncertain. “Can we help? I mean do you . . . " 

"I don’t want to take your money, Morse," Thursday sighed. "But thank you for the asking." 

But Morse said, “Why not? Charlie took yours. We’re family, too, aren't we? We went on a road trip to Paris without being at one another’s throats. That must make us family, certainly."

Thursday laughed at that, and realized with a jolt that he hadn't laughed at anything for weeks. His throat almost felt as if the sound might get caught there, as if it had been filled with cobwebs and rust.  

No, it wasn't so terrible, admitting the truth.  Just the opposite: It felt like something within him that had been frozen was just beginning to thaw.

 

“Perhaps you might write her a letter, apologizing, telling her how you feel," Morse said. 

“I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“I think you would. If you tried.”

"Hmmmmm…," Thursday said. "Way she feels right now, she'd probably tear the thing up without reading it." 

"You might send her a postcard," Morse said. “Just write a poem for her on the back. She’d have to see it for a moment, even if it was just as she was throwing it out.”

"I can't send her a postcard with a poem on it, Morse. What would she make of that?" 

Morse looked affronted. "It might work," he said. 

Thursday looked into the fire in the hearth again and felt the warmth of it course through him, as if it was melting him from a block of ice into a flesh and blood man, as he spoke. Casting him into just one more man that would have to make it through, one way or another. 

"Well, enough with the woe-is-me then, I think," Thursday said. “So. How are you settling in?”

“Bixby’s had the house on Lake Silence redone,” Morse said.

“Couldn’t sell the place,” Bix said.

“I’ll bet,” Thursday said grimly.

“I haven’t been out there yet, though," Morse said. "I came straight to the station this morning.”

“You’ll like what they’ve done with the place," Bix said.  And, here his eyes shone in the firelight. “My hydroplane is still there, out in an outbuilding. If it warms up a bit, I thought I’d give it a go."

Morse looked glum at this, the corners of his mouth turning down, imprinting those familiar parentheses on his face.  “I have become death, the shatterer of worlds, waiting that hour that ripens to their doom," he said. 

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Thursday thought. 

But, bizarrely, Bix answered as if such a sentence was part of a typical conversation, just something one said over a pint in a booth at the Lamb and Flag.

“It’s not that dangerous,” Bixby said. “Besides, I’m not sure what it is you’ve done to your Jag, but whatever it is, I suspect it’s illegal in most countries."

Morse looked into his ale and hummed noncommittally. Now it was he who seemed keen to change the subject.  He took a thoughtful sip and said to Thursday, "I have an idea. About where we might start tomorrow." 

*********

Endeavour had been so anxious to get to the station to find out how Thursday was doing, that Bixby had dropped him straight there from the airport. He hadn't had time to think about the house on Lake Silence until after they left the pub.

As soon as they pulled into the drive, he noticed the change. It was still a large house, but much smaller than it had been before . . . it was now more of an imposing square than an ostentatious rectangle.

Inside, things seemed fresh and new as well. 

"It had to be done, old man," Joss said, watching his reaction. "It was quite a job, but it's well . . .  it's for the best." 

Endeavour took a look into the drawing room; it was larger than the one in their house in Lorraine, painted red instead of ivory, but it also had tall windows, and the furniture had been set up much like it was at home: couches and tables, a thick Persian rug across the bright, polished wood floor, and, by a window, a longer table with delicate legs, with a red box record player on top. 

"I like it," Endeavour said. 

It was actually quite nice; it was certainly a refuge after being so long at the nick.

 

Upstairs, he opened his suitcase and started to unpack. There was the kilt, right on top. It felt like an age since had packed it in Lorraine. Morse, Morse, Morse. It would be just the thing to not think about that for a while. He pulled his off jumper and picked up the fly plaid, tossing it over his white shirt and fastening it with the heavy brooch at his shoulder.

******

When Joss came in through the bedroom door, he immediately started laughing.

”Et voila,” Endeavour said. 

“You look damn good in that thing. You should wear it for the New Year’s Eve party.”

New Year’s Eve party? What was Joss on about? He'd sooner walk all through the depths of Hades than attend any New Year's Eve party that might be held in Oxford. 

But then, before Endeavour could ask what he meant, Joss was already crossing the room, his full mouth pursed in a smile, his brown eyes sparkling with laughter. “Is it true then, what they say about kilts?" he asked. 

“Is what true?” Endeavour asked. 

Joss laughed again.  “I guess I’ll just have to find out."

And then he was crossing the room in two strides and tumbling him onto the bed. Endeavour rolled along, and then over, so that he was stradling him, nuzzling his face against Joss's neck and shoulder and inhaling the rich scent of his aftershave, a heady scent that made his mind go warm and fuzzy, sending all the spinning wheels winding down to a halt. 

He could feel the vibrations in Joss’s throat as he laughed. “Well, my word, it is true, then.”

Endeavour rubbed his face against  Joss’s, relishing in the burn of stubble across his cheek.

“You’ve got that pirate look again,” Endeavour murmured. 

“Didn’t have time for a second shave,” he said. He rubbed his face thoughtfully and smiled. “Do you know what we are? The pirate and the clansman? We’re the two central characters you're always finding on the cover of those bodice-ripper novels.”

“Those _what?”_ Endeavour asked.

It was too bad, really. For the first time ever, it seemed Joss wanted to discuss novels, and Endeavour hadn't the slightest idea as to which ones he was talking about. 

“Never mind,” Joss said fondly, and then he ran one broad hand through the curls at his nape and pulled him forward in a kiss.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: In which Fancy goes out on a limb, Thrusday goes out on inquiry, Bix goes out for punting, and Endeavour goes into the Netherworld.

 

When Trewlove came into the station early that morning, she found Fancy and Morse sitting in two chairs pulled over to Strange’s desk, their heads bent over a scattering of papers there. It would be difficult to find two more unlikely compatriots, she would have thought, but, nonetheless, they seemed to be deep in conversation.

“Look at this,” Fancy said, brushing the hair from his eyes as he looked up at her. “Morse found another of those red papers in the mail room. It looks like we’ve been off by one message this entire time.”

“Oh?” Trewlove asked, circling around them to look at the photographs and messages spread out across the desk, with two spare red papers at the last row.

Fancy was clearly excited by whatever theory Morse had hatched; he was talking a mile a minute, attempting to explain it all. He wasn’t particularly skilled at holding a narrative line, though—in his eagerness to not miss a detail, he tended to jump about and backtrack.

As Fancy spoke, Trewlove noticed that Morse held a small notebook in his lap. It was a curious little book—every bit of white space was covered in blue ink, with words running vertically and horizontally and diagonally, with small pictures sketched in the margins, and arrows arching from sentence to sentence. Trewlove couldn’t help but try to read some of it over Morse’s shoulder.

Morse must have felt the weight of her gaze, because he turned around suddenly, his blue eyes wide, looking as startled as if she had walked in on him in the loo. And, indeed, he snatched the book away, off into his pocket, just as he might slam the door.

Fancy continued on, the exchange unnoticed.  She turned her attention back to his words, but it all sounded rather far-fetched to her.

“It does seem a bit much, doesn’t it?” she said crisply.

She thought Morse might take offence at that—he seemed a prickly buggar—but instead, his eyes quickly softened from alarmed to thoughtful as he considered her.

“I thought so, too,” he said. “It’s almost like . . . “

“Like Mason Gull?” Fancy said.

Morse looked surprised at that. “How have you heard about him?”

“ _Everybody’s_ heard that story,” Fancy said. “The opera killer, the eerie messages, how he came right in the Cowely CID posing as a shrink, how he put your photo in a basement with a victim, how you and Thursday tackled him on a rooftop . . . “

Morse seemed to grow paler the more Fancy talked, but miraculously, he eventually cottoned on and said, “Oh, but it can’t be him, though. As soon as we got the first message, Thursday called the asylum. I think he may even have driven out there and taken a look at him through the one-way glass, just to see for himself.”

“Oh,” said Morse, faintly. He sighed deeply. “It does seem quite the same, though. It’s almost like . . . like someone’s playing a game with me. It seems odd that so much should have happened yesterday . . . . it’s as if someone knew that I . . . “

“Fancy!” came a shout from across the room.

The three of them looked up.

“Didn’t you tell DI Thursday that I wanted to talk to him about this?” Dawkins, said, gesturing to Morse.

Fancy evidently failed to understand that by “this,” Dawkins meant Morse. Trewlove let her face go frozen, so as not to reveal the contempt she sometimes felt for the man. One thing the job had taught her:  she knew how to hold her cards close.

“This what?” Fancy said.

“This  . . .” the Chief Superintendent struggled for the word . . . “this situation,” he said, waving his hand again in Morse’s direction.

Fancy looked confused. “You mean Constable Morse?”

“He’s not a _constable_. We don’t need some . . .”

“Some what?” Morse asked, his face impassive.

Dawkins continued to address Fancy, as if Morse had not spoken. “. . . some _person_ who is the subject of a scandalous biography lounging around the nick. He was just sitting here, asleep at Strange’s desk, completely unattended, when I came by last night. If he’s here to provide input on the messages we’ve found, let him do that and be on his . . .”

“But, Sir, he’s the one who’s figured out what they might mean,” Fancy protested.

“That’s fine, then,” Dawkins said He looked to Morse and said, “Congratulations,” with an air of sarcasm in his voice.  Then, he continued.  “But he’s got no place . . . “

“But, sir,” Fancy said. “What if a new message is found? If he’s not here, then we’ll lose the  . . .”

“Fancy! My office! Now!”

“But . . .”

“Now!”

Fancy pushed his chair back a bit more forcefully than necessary, and then stalked after Dawkins.

 

Morse sat quietly and watched them go. Then he stood up and shrugged on his coat.

Trewlove found the whole incident almost painful to watch. How many times throughout her career had she been told she didn’t belong in the nick? But no one thus far had dared to speak of her in the third person, as if she wasn’t at all present.

“Sorry,” she said softly. She wasn’t sure what else to say.

“’Ts all right," Morse said. “Funny, really, that the man should be so worried about that book. I don’t suppose Jerome’s told any worse lies about me than what they’ve done."

He did the last button of his gray wool coat and said, “Tell Fancy I’m sorry to have gotten him into the middle of this.”

Then he left, striding purposefully out through the aisles of desks, as if he was shaking the dust from the place behind him.

 

She looked at his empty chair for a moment.

It might be Fancy’s instinct to be indignant, to say the first thing that popped in into his head. Young men who did so were confident at best, at worst, impulsive. Young women who did so were all too often seem as overly emotional. She had learned to be more circumvent.

She couldn’t help but wonder: there was such an aura of secrecy surrounding Morse’s departure from the force. What was his status, exactly?

It shouldn’t take much to find out.

 

*******

“What are you doing out here, Morse?” Thursday asked, as he came down the sidewalk toward the wide, heavy glass doors of the Thames Valley station. “Cold enough to freeze you alive out here. Thought you might have a check in with Fancy, make sure there’s nothing new in.”

“I have,” Morse said. “There’s nothing. I just thought I’d meet you so we could get an early start. I thought we might pop into the offices over at the Oxford Mail. Then I'll be going.”

“Going?” Thursday asked.

“I can’t go out with you on your inquiries today. You know it’s a conflict of interest. I’m bound to know at least the half of them.”

“But, if we get another message, how will we find you?” Thursday asked.

“You can call me, I suppose. If you can’t reach me, well, you know the pattern now. Just call someone from over at the colleges. This is Oxford, after all. There’s hardly a dearth of people you might ask.”

That all sounded well and good. Trouble was, Thursday didn’t want to call 'someone over at the colleges.'  He wanted to ask Morse.  He didn’t have the faith in the entire staff of the colleges that he had in his onetime bagman.

Thursday wanted to protest, but there was something stubborn in the lines in Morse’s face that didn’t brook argument.

 

“Did something happen?” Thursday ask shrewdly. “Up in the offices?”

“No,” Morse said. “It’s the same old nick.”

 

Well, that was certainly a statement that could cut both ways.

 

But maybe Morse might be persuaded yet.

It would have been nice to have one last collar with Morse. It’s a pity that you don’t know that things are over.

Until you find that they are.

 

*********************

He hadn’t been up the creaking stairwell to the offices of the Oxford Mail in years. But it was all just as he remembered—those dips in the center of the steps, the flimsy metal banister, the small window on the landing, letting in a minimum of light. It was enough to give a man déjà vu.

As they came in through the old, scarred doors, Miss Frazil turned in her swivel chair, her face full of surprise. “Inspector Thursday?” she queried. And then, “ _Morse?_ ”

“Hello,” Morse said.

Miss Frazil smiled at the understated greeting. He might have shared a pint with her just last week, the way Morse behaved.

“I haven’t seen you for an age,” she said. “How’ve you been keeping?”

“Well, enough, thank you,” Morse said. “And you?”

“Never better. I got the wine you sent at Christmas. It was an amazing packing job. Not one bottle broken.”

“Ah,” Morse said. “No, I would have thought not. I always bring an extra bottle into the post office for Monsieur Rilaine, so that he takes extra care with my packages.”

Miss Frazil raised her eyebrows at that and smiled bemusedly. And small wonder. In the past, Morse would have expressed disdain for a little kickback like that, no matter how innocuous. Thursday had had a few years to get used to the shift, which he tended to put down to the influence of Bixby.

“So,” she said, tilting her head thoughtfully and taking a drag of her cigarette, “What might I help you with today? Some article out of the morgue, I can fetch you, then?” She quirked a smile. “I don’t suppose you might be here to give me an exclusive on what you think of Jerome Hogg’s book?”

“No,” Morse said.

Miss Frazil laughed lightly, the monosyllabic answer appearing to be all that she expected out of Morse. “Well,” she said, "can’t blame a woman for trying.”

“Actually, I’m here to ask about your advertisers,” Morse said. “Have any development firms placed any particularly ostentatious ads of late?

Miss Frazil blew a steady stream of smoke up and away from them. “Quite a few, actually. Have you not seen all the new development around Oxford? We’ve had several firms open advertising accounts.”

“Have there been any that have gotten behind on squaring their bill with you?” Morse asked.

“There’s Poplar Hall. There’s been a bit of turmoil over that one,” she said. “And, the word is that a few palms got nicely greased at the council, getting that through.”

“Town Hall graft,” Thursday grunted. “As old as the ark.”

“Which firm is behind that?” Morse asked.

“Holloway Construction,” she said. “I’m going out to the courthouse today, covering a trial. I have a source in records there I might ask—about any permits and such that might have been filed lately—if that would be of use. Might be able to provide the names of some of the investors.”

“That would be helpful. Thank you,” Morse said.

“I’ll call you. Are you over at Thames Valley, then?”

Morse looked a bit disquieted at that. Then he cast an uncertain glance at Thursday. 

  
“Thursday will be there,” he said. “You might call him.”

“All right,” she said. “Well, don’t be a stranger. It’s nice getting your cards, but they’re hardly full of news.”

Thursday had to suppress a laugh at that. The only thing Morse ever wrote on Christmas cards to him year after year had been: _Happy Christmas! E._

Miss Frazil mashed out her cigarette and folded her arms across the desk. “If you don’t want to talk about Jerome Hogg, you wouldn’t consider an interview about the whole ‘poems in the woods affair,’ would you?”

Morse’s eyes seemed to waver for a moment. Then he said, “Yes, all right. I suppose I could. A brief one.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined it would be any other sort,” Miss Frazil said. 

 

*********

It had been a while since Thursday had navigated these posh circles. He found himself missing Morse, just as he had on that summer day back in '67, when he and Strange had come to the Belboroughts’ house on Lake Silence, to ask about a body found drowned nearby. Morse always had a knack for cutting through the doublespeak this lot so seemed to relish.

He wished at least that Morse would have consented to wait for him down at the nick, in case another message surfaced.  If they managed to interpret the messages more quickly than the culprit acted, they might yet catch their man.

He had pled his case, but the lad wouldn’t be persuaded. Said he “had another matter to attend to. A matter of life and death.”

Whatever the hell that meant.

*************

And just as well that Morse had't come. It was all a colossal waste of time.

Holloway, Thompson, Grant, Belborough—all of the men Thursday checked in with—were stubbornly tight-lipped; they didn’t seem to understand that he was there not to incriminate them in anything, but rather to discover if they might be in any danger, if they might be the ones to whom the last red letter referred.

 _Do you have a warrant_? they asked, one after the other. _I want my lawyer here._

 

I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to warn you, Thursday said. It’s for your own protection that you come clean.

 

The only breakthrough came when he went to visit Anthony Chalbourne.

Again, Thursday felt a startling surge of déjà vu. Chalbourne seemed unchanged from the time he had interviewed him three years ago, during the Corcoran case: cropped sandy brown hair, a dapper gray suit; the man was a bundle of energy, bustling about piles of papers and files.

The study here at his parents’ house, where Belborough had reluctantly told him he was staying, was a worse disaster than the one Thursday remembered seeing when he had visited him at his own house, on that day he found Edmund Corcoran’s last letter, a final plea to Chalbourne for help.  

 

“Have I backed out of any negotiations lately?” Chalboune said with a rueful laugh. "Take a look around, Inspector! I’ve backed out of everything. It’s taken all I have to make sense out of all of this mess. My father’s memory has been going as of late, and he won’t get rid of his old agent out of loyalty, even though the old man is really just as bad as he is."

“Have you ever heard anyone mention the name of Cromwell Ames?”  Thursday asked. 

“Ames?” Chalbourne asked, a cloud clearing from his brow. “Dear God. I thought that was a prank.”

“ _What_ was a prank?” Thursday asked sharply.

“I received a phone call a few days ago. From a man who called himself Cromwell Ames. At least I think that was it. It started out reasonably enough, but the truth is, I’ve been so disorganized as of late, I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. He seemed to think I was being deliberately deceptive, became irate. Said something to the effect that “he and his associates hadn’t worked as hard as they had to be hoodwinked at the last moment by a ‘bunch of lying English dogs’ and some ‘polished-up backwoods nobody.’ I had no idea what the man was on about. I told him he must have had the wrong number and hung up on him.”

Thursday put a hand to his forehead. “And you’ve actually no idea as to what he was referring to?”

“No,” Chalbourne said simply. “Sorry.”

 “But ‘associates?’” Thursday clarified. “Are you sure he used that word?”

“Yes,” Chalborune said. "I do remember that." 

 

It wasn’t much to go on, but two things, at least, were clear.  

 

Ames had people working along with him, then, behind the scenes. 

And also, it sounded as if Ames didn’t have just one score to settle, but several.

 

So, in the end, his conversation with Chalbourne did shed _some_ light on the situation; if only to show them they were even more in the dark than they previously imagined.

********

“Long day, Constable?” Trewlove asked.

“You might say that,” Fancy said, glumly. “It’s over in three and three-quarters minutes, though. I am clocking at exactly 1600.” He said this as if it was the worst revenge he could think of, not to spend on extra moment of his time in the nick. 

“Well, on a rough day like today, it might be nice to take a girl out for a pint,” she said. 

“Yeah,” he said absentmindedly.

She counted in her head, waiting for the meaning of her words to kick in.

He looked up sharply, a spark back in his eyes. “Are you asking?”

“ _I’m_ not asking,” she said. “But if you are, I’m game.”

 ***************

“It’s all bloody disappointing, that’s all. What? Does Dawkins want to make this _more_ difficult?” Fancy said, over his pint.  “He doesn’t care that Morse’s figuring things out.  He just cares that he’s a supposed to be a bender,” Fancy said, dismissively.

“And you don’t?” Trewlove said.

“Of course, I care,” Fancy said. “I thought Morse’s idea sounded more helpful than anything the tossers we’ve had over from the colleges have had to offer. Every single time, Sgt. Strange has had to have someone different come over. Morse knew it all right away. It’s daft, not letting him stay at the nick, if he’s willing."

“No, I mean, you don’t care if he’s supposedly a bender?”

“Oh,” he said, looking a bit stunned that she would bring the issue up. “It’s fine with me.” Then, his face contorted into a comic mixture of awkwardness and sincerity. “I mean, _I_ don’t care if he’s that way. But I’m not . . . like that. I mean, not that it matters really, but just so that you know . . . .”

The higher Trewlove raised her eyebrows, the more incoherent he became.

“. . I mean, just on the off chance, you were wondering . . .”

 “And why would it matter to me, then?” she asked.

It was just too easy.

“Well, it wouldn’t I suppose. But just in case it _did_ matter, I well . . . of . . . ” He met her eyes and suddenly seemed to realize. . . “are you taking the mickey out of me?”

“Now would I do that?” Trewlove asked. “I’m all heart, remember?”

And then he was laughing. And she laughed, too. 

It was good to laugh with someone.

So often she had passed the pub and seen her fellow officers through the window, laughing at this very table. She was always on the outside looking in. She told herself it was for the best, a necessary sacrifice, keeping up the veneer of professionalism that was her only guard against the naysayers she encountered on an almost weekly basis.

But sometimes, she missed it, the feeling of simply having a friend. Someone with whom it would be safe to share a laugh and would not think the less of her for it.

And if she was going to chance having a friend at Thames Valley, she decided, she could do worse than to have Fancy in her corner.

 

“Would you like to go out for a walk?” Fancy asked her, finishing his pint. She was surprised he would ask her so directly; any usual address to her of late seemed to involve a lot of hemming and hawing.

He must have misread the expression on her face, though, because he began backpedaling immediately. “I suppose no one is daft enough to go out for a walk on a day as cold as today,” he said. 

“No,” Trewlove said. “Just us.”

*******************

“It’s far too cold out for this.”

“You were the one wanting to get out your hydroplane,” Endeavour said.

“Ah, but the hydroplane is faster than the cold. It can’t catch up with you. This on the other hand,” Bixby said, holding up his punting pole, “is a thoroughly miserable experience.”

He plunged the pole back down into the dark water and shoved off. “The damn pole keeps getting stuck in the mud,” he complained. “The only way we could be going slower is if we were going backwards."

 

The Isis was a steely gray, coursing between bare branches of trees that reached up into a white sky that was surprisingly bright. It was a definite snow sky, but behind it all, it was clear that the sun was still there, shining, backlighting the heavy clouds into a subtle luminescence. 

“Stop,” Endeaovur said. “You’re making it wobble. We should try to push off at the same time. . . just stop.”

“What have I done wrong now?” Bixby asked.

“Just stop and sit down. I’ll do it.”

“I don’t want to just _sit_ there. Where’s the fun in that?  I want to steer the damn thing,” Bixby said, giving his pole another violent push.

“Yes,” Endeavour said. “And I don’t want to fall into the Isis when it’s five degrees above freezing, so . . . “

“Just give me another chance. What? You don’t think I’m posh enough to get the hang of it, is that it?”

“No,” Endeavour said, “I don’t think you’re patient enough.”

But already Bixby wasn’t listening; he was looking up ahead. Endeavour looked, too, following his gaze.

 

On top of a delicately ornate bridge arching over the water like the arc of a swan's flight, a young dark-haired man and a blonde woman were facing each other, standing at arm’s length apart, holding each other’s hands.

“Look,” Bixby said, “Two lovebirds. Warm hearts on a cold December day.”

The man took the woman’s hands, and in a gallant little flourish, raised them to his lips. There was something familiar about . . .

“Oh, no,” Endeavour said.

“What?” Bixby asked.

Endeavour cast his face aside so that he was looking out over the bare trees, so that the couple on the bridge would not clearly see his face.

“I know them,” he said quietly.

“What?” Bixby asked.

“They’re two officers. From Thames Valley.”

Bixby looked delighted at this. “Ah. In a dark and turbulent world, two young officers, sworn to protect the city, find solace in one another’s arms.”

“Don’t start . . .” Endeavour began.

“Why don’t you serenade them?” Bixby asked.

Endeavour looked at him aghast. “I will not.”

“Go ahead. Sing them a nice Italian aria. You’ll be like a gondolier. The winter chill of Oxford will be transformed into a gentle Italian breeze, and the young couple will embrace, and the trees will spring into blossom. It will be like magic. And all terribly romantic.”

Endeavour chanced a quick glance at Fancy and Trewlove. “I’m not sure if they’re up to 'terribly romantic.'”

“Well, then, how about 'sort of sweet?'” Bixby said.

“No,” Endeavour said.

“If you don’t, I will.”

“Don’t,” Endeavour said. “You can't carry a tune. Just leave them alone. Why ruin the moment?”  

 

Fancy was saying something to Trewlove, and then, he closed his eyes and learned forward.

Poor Fancy.

It was painful to watch.

He really was an awkward sod.

 

But then, Endeavour couldn’t imagine what it was that he had said, but somehow, he must have pulled it off, because she, too, leaned forward to meet him in a kiss.

Bixby laughed softy. “O-ho,” he said.  “Wasn’t sure if they had it in them.”

Endeavour turned and held up his pole. “Would you please stop?” He had said it more loudly than he intended, and his last word echoed like a crow calling in the desolate trees.

Trewlove and Fancy broke apart and looked down at them. Endeavour turned away.

 

“Well. That was awful. I hope you’re happy.”

“Sorry old man,” Bix said. He seemed contrite.

 

It was all a lost cause. Endeavour had thought Bixby might like to punt—he’d be out on the water, just as he would be on his hydroplane. Just not in something that seemed likely to hurdle him to his death. But he should have known, punting would not be his speed.

Because, well, because of the speed. Speed was, after all, the whole point of the hydroplane.

 

“Endeavour?” Bixby asked.

“Hmmmmmm?”

 Who was it you were talking about? When you were telling Thursday about the message? The one in French that you said you thought was about some real estate deal?”

“Cromwell Ames. He’s some West Indian gangster, apparently. He’s like a Hydra.”

“A Hydra?”

“A many-headed monster. Meaning he’s not acting alone, I don’t believe. Unlike his nemesis and rival, Eddie Nero, he’s branching out, making alliances in high and low places alike. Not quite sure how he’s managing it. The man seems half-mad. But then, his associates might be equally so.”

“Good God,” Bixby said. “Oxford seems such a picturesque, peaceful place. Never would have thought the city capable of producing such a drama.”

“There’s always things like that. And even the expensive delicate ship that saw something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. Why do you ask, anyway?”

“No reason,” Bixby said. “I was just curious.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’ll have to run out for a while, when we get home.”

“Why?”

“To pick up our evening suits. For Holloway’s New Year’s Eve party. I told you about that."

“Hmmmmmm,” Endeavour said in disapproval.

“What? You don’t want to go?”

Endeavour snorted at that. He must be joking, surely. “Of course, I don’t want to go to such a party," he said. 

“There will be five hundred people there. You won’t necessarily run into anyone you know.”

Five hundred people. He said that as if it should be an encouragement.

“Why are you so keen?” Endeavour asked.

Bixby seemed surprised. “It’s what one does on New Year’s Eve, isn’t it? And this one sounds like it will be quite the show.”

“I wish we were at home. Then we could just go to Sophie’s party,” Endeavour said, imaging the snug brick house on the little street in St. Brieuc. Where they knew everyone and everyone knew them. And no one cared if they slipped out the back door just before midnight, to take a walk out through the woods, for a clandestine kiss.

 

Funny how he had once kissed Susan out on the peak of a bridge, out in the open air over the Isis, just as Trewlove and Fancy had just done. Susan, to whom he had been only a passing fancy, a record that was well-treasured for a season and then delegated to the bottom of the pile. But to kiss Bix, he had to seek some secluded corner, some oasis in a shadowed back garden.

 

He looked at Bixby and remembered that last year, at Sophie’s party, he had twice been trapped in a corner, listening to Monsieur Malle rattle on about his book about the history of the town, of fourteenth-century guilds and eighteenth-century land reform.   

He had given up much of what he loved, for a life in the provinces.

Bix missed it all, Endeavour realized. The spectacle. There was something in Bixby that was always going to be swayed by a bit of glamour, a bit of romance. Just as he yearned to turn a bleak December day in Oxford into a summer day in Venice, he would always see things not as they were, but as he wanted them to be.

If Bixby was so set on this party, then Endeavour supposed he could pull it off. It wasn’t too much to ask of him, after all.

 

He would have a Scotch or two before they left, just to take the edge off. And then he’d put on his evening suit and sit in the car and walk through the door, and, while Bixby worked the room, he would work his way through one Scotch after another, run the score of The Ring Cycle through this head, and the night would be over. Perhaps they might slip outside close to midnight, as they always did at Sophie’s, to kiss under the stars unseen.

And perhaps he might even manage to do better than that. If he _did_ go, he was, despite Bix’s assurances, bound to run into someone who might be of interest to the case. And then, perhaps, he might find something out about those notes. Although he wasn’t quite sure how a conversation like that might run.

_“Hello, Bruce, How have you been the last three years? Awfully terrible all that business about Henry was, wasn’t it?  By the by, you wouldn’t have entered into any sorts of deals with a development firm lately, have you? With someone who might be a front for a Jamaican mob boss?_

Well, no.

He would never enter into any conversation like that.

But surely, he would be able to get through one party.

************************

 

Thursday was surprised someone would ring the bell this late. For a swooping moment, he thought it might be Win. But of course, she had a key.

But perhaps she had misplaced it?

Thursday opened the door. It was Bixby.

Well, that had been his second guess.

 

 “Thursday? Do you have a moment?” he asked.

Thursday said nothing; he merely opened the door further, allowing Bix to step inside.

Bix ran his hands through his dark feathered hair. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“The beginning’s usually a favorite,” Thursday said grimly.

Thursday had a pretty good idea where Bixby was going. Miss Frazil had called him earlier in the day with a report on what her source in the records office had told her. All the doings of Poplar Hall—a list of potential investors: It was all the usual players in Oxford: Belborough, Thompson, Holloway, of course. And, then a new name thrown into the mix: Joss Bixby.

 

“When we left here last summer, once we got to the airport, Endeavour and I had—well—I suppose you could call it a row. He told me he didn’t want to come back to France, and well—he left. Just sort of left me there. At the airport." 

Thursday rolled his eyes a bit at that. He had thought then, when Morse half-staggered out the door, his eyes still glittering oddly, that that day was bound to end in disaster.

But Bixby was already moving on . . .

“. . . and I grew careless, I suppose, and, well, I began to go ahead and take the plunge with whatever proposal came my way and . . . “

 

“Christ, Bixby,” Thursday interrupted, ready to cut to the chase. “What have you gotten into?”

“I was depressed, all right? Endeavour had gone off, God only knew where, and . . . . . “

 

Thursday snorted. “And so, you get involved in shady business deals with criminals?”

“It started out innocently enough,” he protested. “Bruce Belborough called.”

Thursday snorted again at that. Belborough? Bix you would think would be one of the last people to trust that blowhard.

 

“He was starting some lawsuit against Hogg,” Bixby was saying, “and he wanted to know if I’d be interested in being a party to it. We’re hardly friends. I can barely tolerate the man to be honest. But I suppose there _was_ that connection, there, at least. To Endeavour. I’ve never . . . we’ve never . . .  talked to any of them, you know. Since that happened.”

 “And then, he got to talking about a development plan he was getting in on. With Holloway Construction. Called Poplar Hall. I don’t know, on a business level, we are a bit alike, I suppose…I rather think I handle things with a bit more finesse, but there you are. He said his cousin, Tony Chalbourne, was thinking of getting on board. He’s a decent fellow, so I thought it must be on the up and up. And I had been directing the renovation of the house at the time, and I quite enjoyed it—the nuts and bolts of the thing. So much of my time is spent with matters that are all on paper. This was something tangible, and that held a certain appeal. Belborough went so far as to mail me some plans, but then I decided that it looked to be more money-spinner than monument . . .  And anyway, by then, Endeavour had come back and . . ."

“. . . and you figured Morse would be less than thrilled to have ought to do with that lot.”

 Bixby shrugged as if he wouldn’t deny it.

“Once Endeavour came back, I saw it through his eyes, and I thought, ‘God, what am I doing?’ I suppose I had just been pursuing anything that might keep me distracted.”  

“So then you told them it was a no go?”  

“Belborough called one more time, said that the developer was already beginning to have to default on some of his loans, due to investors backing out of the project. It sounded like there was someone else involved, some power behind Holloway. They seemed a bit too insistent, if you understand my meaning.”

“You think it’s a front for something else? Poplar Hall?" he asked. 

“Yes,” Bixby said simply.

“You think Ames might be involved?”

“I think he has something to do with it, yes.”

“Why?” Thursday asked.

“He called me.”

 

Thursday groaned. “Oh, Bix. This just gets better and better.”

But Bixby looked nonplussed. “Endeavour said he’s like a Hydra. That he's gotten some other associates working behind him.”

He paused and then leaned forward slightly in his chair. “We’re going to a New Year’s Eve Party, Endeavour and I, out at Holloway’s. Perhaps, if I feign a renewed interest in the project, I might get a bit more of an idea how this all links together. Those messages. Ames. Holloway.”

Thursday was uncertain. Getting a civilian involved in such subterfuge went against his grain. He furrowed his brow, concerned. “Are you sure you can pull it off, an act like that?”

But Bixby only smiled. “I shouldn’t worry,” he said. “I think I can manage.”

********

 

The Great Hall of Edmund Holloway’s house was so bright with crystal chandeliers and tapered candles that the place was awash with light, turning the ivory walls into radiating gold. A bubbling host of people milled about, holding delicately-stemmed glasses, while others gathered by a white table lined with silver platters, and still others were turning and and gliding out on the dance floor, in time to a waltz played by a stringed quartet. 

Six Christmas trees stood ablaze with more lights, three on each side of the Great Hall. With a sudden pang, Endeavour thought of their own tree, left behind in their drawing room in Lorraine.

“I wasn’t done with our Christmas tree,” Endeavour said.

“What do you mean _done with it?_ ” Bixby asked.

“I wasn’t done looking at it yet.”

Bixby laughed. “Well, you needn’t worry on that score. Madame Lambert told me in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t touching the thing. It will still be there when you get back, even if it’s as dry as tinder.”

Thinking of cantankerous Madame Lambert, of the tree that would be waiting for them even if it were February, was like a breath of home. He did have his anchor. Even if it was across the sea. It was there. He could do this.  

He took a deep breath and plunged alongside Bixby into the crowds.

Bixby talked to one person, and then another. He was laughing and talking and Endeavour was drinking and trying to smile in all the right places. And why did Bixby find these parties fun?

There was no one here Endeavour wanted to talk to. The only familiar faces he saw in the crowd belonged to people he was keen to avoid. He forgot about his onetime resolve to engage anyone in a conversation about any possible development proposals they had lately considered. His only goal was to get through the evening without making a hash of things for Bix.

Bixby seemed almost like a wave of water, moving easily through the crowds, starting up a conversation with this group, and then another, his dark eyes sparkling as he laughed. He was in his element; he seemed to attract attention wherever he went.

 The room was overwarm with such a multitude of guests; Endeavour kept getting jostled as people moved to the dance floor, and he hated that—those sudden brushes against his back or at his arm that made him startle, that made his breath catch in his throat and his heart jump, that made him wish he could go, run out the doors, stand in the night air, where it would be cold and still and silent.

Endeavour began to eye the bar longingly. Just another Scotch, and this could all seem to be happening further away, at a safe distance. He weighed the risks. Bix seemed unlikely to move from this spot—perhaps it would be safe to go and get a drink.

He made his way through the crowd and he was Orpheus, walking through the underworld, one fraught with unseen dangers and loud, distracting voices, and he wasn’t Orpheus— Orpheus must not look back, after all, lest he lose Eurydice, but Endeavour could do nothing _but_ look back, turning to look over his shoulder to keep Bix in his line of sight.

At the bar, he downed a glass of Scotch, and then set his glass down for another. He sipped it for a moment, thoughtfully.  And then downed that one, too. And the noises all drew back—the music and the tinkle of glass and the clash of laughter that wasn’t quite laughter but something else.

And then there was a familiar voice behind him.

“Oh, God,” the voice said. “You aren’t still self-medicating with alcohol, are you?”

He wheeled around. It was Sylvie, the dark-haired woman he had first met at one of Bixby’s parties in Oxfordshire.  The one who had looked him up and down, took a thoughtful drag on her cigarette, and said. “I don’t get it.”

“Am I still _what?_ ” he asked.

“Self-medicating?” she enunciated more clearly. “Relying on drink to cover up your problems.”

“I don’t have problems," Endeavour said crisply. "It’s what one does on New Year’s Eve.”

She said nothing, just looked at him with a condescending aura of concern.

Endeavour drew himself up to his full height and tried to look just as condescending. “You’ve been reading too many magazines,” he said.  

“Does Bix know you’re here?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “He’s here, too.”  

“Oh,” she said. “He didn’t mention he was coming to England. Is this where he found you?”

What's this? How did she even know he was gone? And anyway . . . “He didn’t _find_ me,” Endeavour said. She spoke of him rather like a lost suitcase. “I had some things to do and then I went home. It’s no concern of yours.”   

“Hey,” she said. “You don’t have to be so snooty with me. I was the one who told him he should go look for you. He was an absolute pill when you were gone. A complete moper.”

Endeavour scarcely knew what to say. How was it she seemed to know so much about them? What had Bix been saying about him? _Self-medicating?_ What awful things must have he said for her to be looking at him so, as if he were a disaster waiting to happen?

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” Endeavour said.

She drew nearer, her brow furrowed, “Are you sure?” she asked. Then she looked around the room. “Where is Bix anyway? Does he know you’re wandering around here alone like this?”

And it was _there_ : because it was true, wasn’t it? He had been happy enough in Scotland— it was enough, to know that Bix was somewhere out there in the world. But looking back: what had he been doing? And he slept under the stars and he stumbled aboard trains, casting a look over his shoulder. And then there was the look on Bix’s face when he had gotten home and asked, “Oh, did I miss my birthday?”

But then he had also climbed to the top of brush-green hills as the sun died in a pool of pink, and he had strode out onto smooth stones by the North Sea, and walked beneath flocks of birds that flew like arrows and it wasn’t fair and . . .

“I don’t need a warden,” he said.

 And he spun off through the crowd.

And the house was like a maze of rooms and people and the place was spinning with music and conversation, so many conversations all bubbling at once so that it was impossible to follow any stream and anyhow none of the words he overheard held any meaning. He could see the people in the crowd’s mouths move, but Endeavour didn’t understand what they were saying. Any what did their words mean anyway? The words were all of them empty, the clashes of buckets falling into a well.

And then there was one voice in the crowd calling, “Pagan?” and Endeavour knew only that he did not want to talk to anyone who would call him by that name. And that he did not want to be called that name at all. 

“Pagan?” the voice called again. And the word was the very sound of fear. 

And he was Orpheus in the shadows of the Netherworld. And he wasn’t Orpheus, because he should have kept looking back, kept making certain that he held Bixby firmly in the line of his sight.


	5. Chapter 5

“Pagan!” called a voice in the crowd.

Endeavour kept on going; he needn’t answer. It wasn’t as if that name was his any longer.

But then, there was a hand on his arm, guiding him to turn around.

“Good God, man, have you gone quite deaf?” a man was saying.

 

Endeavour’s breath caught for a moment in his throat, as he was spun on the spot, so that he was face to face with Alexander Reece, the merest of acquaintances from years ago.

Reece was laughing. “How much have you had to drink? It’s only half ten. You had better pace yourself.” And then his expression turned solemn. “You know, I’m quite surprised to see you here. Another mutual friend of ours is here as well, if you catch my meaning.”

Endeavour tried to do just that, but Reece’s meaning eluded him.

A mutual friend? This could mean any number of people—Bruce, Kay, Tony, Pippa. Endeavour scanned the room as Reece spoke; he didn't feel up to talking to any of them.

“It’s been an absolute age, since I saw you last,” Reece was saying.  “Sixty-five, maybe, was it? You were out to Lonsdale, asking about that girl. What was her name?”

Her name. Of course, Reece would have forgotten her name. Once, the man had placed a bet on her. And then, he had forgotten all about her.

“Mary Tremlett,” Endeavour supplied.

“Ah,” he said. “That was it, yes.”

Endeavour couldn’t imagine what else could possibly be required of him, but Reece was looking at him expectantly.

“How have you been keeping?” Endeavour asked.

“Well enough. One bloody article away from tenure, I’d hazard. I saw your former employer the other day. Did you hear? Our mutual friend’s car was blown sky high. Word is, you’re helping out with the case.”

 

Oh. So by ‘our mutual friend,’ Reece meant Jerome Hogg, then.

 

“How did you hear I was helping with the case?” Endeavour asked.

Reece huffed a little laugh. “We might say many things about Jerome, but the truth is, he does have the ear of the city. And, somehow, he’s always finding his way into my office—usually to help himself to paper or a book, so I do hear things.”  He took a sip of his drink and added, “Although one would think with all the money he’s gotten burning you at the stake, he’d be able to afford his own paper clips.”

Reece paused for a moment, as if waiting for him to react to what he had said about the book. But how could he? He’d never been able to bring himself to read the thing.

Seeing the cover was terrible enough—everyone seemed to think the picture on the front was him, but to Endeavour, it looked like the photograph of a stranger. Looking at that cover was like looking at a slightly disturbing illustration of the theories of De Saussure—one with a picture of a hat, for example, with the word _egg_ written beneath it.

“Is it true then? Are you helping the police?”  Reece asked.

“I was,” Endeavour replied.  

“Well, keep in mind what I told you before. Whatever it is you’re about at the colleges, mind how you go. They won’t take kindly to an interloper. Particularly one of their own.”

“I’m not sure I ever was that,” Endeavour said.

And then, there was another voice, coming from  behind him. “Ah, Alexander, my good man, not corrupting our incorruptible soul, I hope?”

 

Endeavour groaned. He couldn’t help but place that affected voice immediately. 

 

Reece laughed. “Not _too_ incorruptible if half of what you say is true, Jerome.”

“I hope you aren’t lending any credence to whatever this man is saying, Pagan. The man would sell his soul for tenure,” Jerome Hogg said.

“If only I had one,” Reece said.

 

A waiter in a livery passed by with a tray tottering with fluted glasses of champagne. Endeavour took one as he passed, and tipped it back.

He wished now he hadn’t darted off from Sylvie. He’d much rather hear one of her discourses on astrological patterns or the latest Indian guru than to be trapped in a conversation with either one of these two. Why had he torn off from her? If he could have just once managed to swallowed his pride, she might very well have helped him to find Bix.

“Well, we can’t all write prize-winning poems . . . or titillating biographies of those who do, can we?” Reece said, with a nod to Endeavour and then Jerome. “It all comes down to the same thing in the end. Filthy lucre. That's what drives the beast called man. Not everyone can afford to scatter their work amidst the trees like the good fairy of the woods.”

They laughed raucously at that. Endeavour could only gather it was meant to be a rather obvious play on the word _fairy_.

They really weren’t all that clever.

“You always were a queer one," Reece said. "You had Susan in the bag, and yet you traded her in for a walking enigma, it seems. Or so they say," he added, with a glance to Jerome.

Endeavour felt a surge of solidarity with Susan, wherever she was. He could just imagine the look on her face if she heard Reece say that he had once had her “in the bag.” Of course, he never would have dared to say such a thing in her presence.

He was an awful coward, really.

“Susan always preferred Henry to me,” Endeavour said tersely.

“And, if I remember, you to me,” Reece said.

Endeavour raised his eyebrows at that.

“Don’t look so affronted. Poor old Pagan. It’s just like I told you years ago. You never were Oxford material. Too bloody decent by half.”

“And it’s like I told you,” Endeavour said. “You didn’t used to be so cruel. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

And then he turned and bolted through the crowd with an urgency that sent people, blessedly, moving out of his way.

 

Perhaps if he went back over to the bar, Bixby would know to find him there. The quartet was starting up again. They really weren’t half bad. If only he could have a Scotch and sit near the musicians, he could tune this all out. All of it.

He certainly hoped at least, that Bixby was enjoying the party. He certainly hoped this had all been worth it.

 

The bartender filled his glass, and Endeavour took it and sat at a small table, keeping his eyes cast down, looking straight into the amber liquid that was like a warming, calming sea.

 

He could still see them out of the corner of his eye, the people spinning on the dance floor.  Spinning and turning and the room was spinning and turning. And words were spinning and turning in the babble of a hundred conversations.

 

No. He needed some air. He finished his drink and plunged back through the circles of people and circles of words and barreled out towards a back door that led into the garden.

And in his haste to get out into the cold, star-lit night, he bumped into a man who was standing in a small circle, sending the man’s drink sloshing in his glass. 

“Sorry,” Endeavour said. And he was sorry—he hated how many people had done that to him during the evening.

But then the man said “Pagan?”—and Endeavour's heart jumped, and he kept going, out through the door.

 

But the man followed him. “Pagan!” he said sharply, and not as a casual acquaintance, not as Reece had done, but as someone who felt he had the right to address him with that sharp note, that insistent tone of command. Pagan turned on the spot.

It was Tony, standing in an evening suit, casually slouched with one hand in his pocket and the other maintaining a grip on his glass.

“Pagan?” he said again, this time a note of question in his voice.

Pagan remained where he was, as if frozen into place.

“Christ,” Tony said. “What’s happened to you? It’s barely gone eleven. You look like you can barely stand.”

“I’m fine,” Pagan said, his voice resonating louder than he had meant it to.

 

Tony walked slowly down the steps to the garden, cautiously, a crease marking his brow.

“Christ,” Tony said again.

Pagan tucked his hair behind one ear with his free hand. Why was Tony looking at him like that?

Then, he was drawing nearer, and for every few steps Tony took toward him, Pagan took one back, until he had backed up against the stone wall of a fountain, one that had been turned off for the winter and was filled with a scattering of dry, brown leaves.

“Why don’t you sit down before you fall down?” Tony suggested.

Pagan wasn’t sure if he was being genuine or sarcastic, but he did as Tony said, perching on the fountain’s cold stone rim.

“Are you all right?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Pagan said.

 

For a long moment, neither of them said a word.

 

“You might have let me know you were coming to Oxford,” Tony said at last. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard from you.”

“I didn’t know I was coming,” Pagan said. “It was a bit of a last-minute decision.”

Tony kept walking, his glass balanced in his hand, steadily forward. “You were here before, too, though, weren’t you? Last summer? It sounds as if you were right on my parents’ property. And you didn’t stop in.”

“I didn’t know you were here,” Pagan said. “And I didn’t want to disturb your parents.”

Tony was within an arm’s reach now, but he kept coming closer, until, finally, he sat down next to him on the stone edge of the fountain filled with leaves.

 

And Pagan hadn’t spoken to any of them since that night—when the worlds crashed together—and Max knelt over Henry’s body and Strange was talking to Kay, and Peter Jakes wiped Henry’s blood off the side of his face.

 

Tony laughed, and his laugh was low and bitter. “It’s not as if you needed to stand on ceremony. It would have been good to hear from you.”

Pagan said nothing.

“I went and looked for one, you know,” Tony said. “I looked a bit odd, I suppose, among your tie-dyed and your jumper-clad, wild-haired disciples.”

 “Looked for one of what?” Pagan asked.

“One of your poems. In the woods. Once it came out from your editor that the whole thing was true.”

 

Pagan didn’t know what to say to that. There was something odd about the image of Tony—the one who among them had always been the most certain of his place and his destiny—searching among the hedgerows for the papers that Endeavour had thrown there on a summer-day whim.

 

“I thought perhaps some words from you might reach me, one way or another,” Tony said. “That the poem I would find would have some answer there. That, through some sort of magic, the one meant for me would find me.”

Pagan remained silent. Tony seemed calm enough, but there was something there, something beneath his words, that caused Pagan’s muscles to tense, that sent his heart racing, as if he was poised to flee.

“But I never found one,” Tony said. “Telling isn’t it? Very apropos, wouldn’t you say?”

What did Tony mean? There was nothing telling in that; it had all simply depended on which way the wind had blown. The beating of a butterfly’s wings might have sent a current of air wafting in another direction, sent one of the poems scurrying to his feet, if that's what was meant to happen. 

 

And perhaps he was reading too much into things as well?

 _I_ _boasted_ _of_ _possessing_ _every_ _possible_ _landscape,_ the message on red paper had said. 

Perhaps the writer of the red letters was not referring to a defaulted real estate deal, but rather to an art heist gone wrong?

 

“My God,” Tony said. “I haven’t spoken to you in three years. Can you even focus for five minutes?”

 

And perhaps he didn’t _want_ to see the clearer meaning of an art heist because of the stolen Caravaggio . . . and his hands were bound and the world was dark green like the woods, but made of silk and . . .

 

“He doesn’t even make you try, does he?” Tony was saying.

 

“No,” Pagan said, slowly.

“No?” Tony laughed.

“I mean, no, I don’t find it apropos. That you didn’t find one. A poem. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“No?” Tony asked. “Well, then. Perhaps you’re right. It would have been thoughtful of you, though, you know, if you had at least dropped me a postcard.”

“A postcard?” Pagan repeated in wonderment.

 

And he was in Ullapool, and bright flags blew out over blue water and. . . 

 “It would have been nice to know if you were alive or dead, at the very least.”

Pagan furrowed his brow in confusion.

But Tony laughed ruefully. “You’ve never given it a thought, have you? It never occurred to you, did it, what it was like for those you left behind? One morning, I went out to that lake house, and the door was standing open, the place empty, utterly deserted. No note, nothing. No sign that you were ever there at all, save for a pile of firewood.”  

And Pagan felt a lump form in his throat. Because no, it hadn’t occurred to him, had it?  It hadn’t occurred to him at all that they might wonder, even worry.

 

On the day that Pagan had called Tony from prison, it had been more than a year since they had spoken. And yet, he and Kay were there within the hour.

And then, in a few months, he had left without one word, never spoke to any of them again. And of course, they must have wondered, but . . .

 

“I told you I was thinking of going,” Pagan said.  

“Yes, going to France with someone who we all suspected was an utter fraud. You might have been lying in a ditch somewhere, for all we knew.”

Pagan snorted at that. “That’s a bit hyperbolic, surely,” he said.

“Has he told you who he really is?”

Pagan said nothing.

 

“I’m not asking the man’s name, Pagan. It’s hardly a betrayal to answer a simple yes or no.”

 

But to say yes was to say that he wasn’t Joss Bixby.

But if owed anyone the truth, wasn’t it Tony?

 

“Yes,” Pagan said slowly.

“Did he tell you then, the truth at least, once you were in France?”

 

“Pagan?”

 

“No,” Pagan said.

“When, then?”

“A few months ago,” Pagan said.  

“A few _months_ .  . ? You mean you’ve been . . .” Tony laughed and it wasn’t at all like his usual laugh. Then, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a flash of silver. He took one long, deep drag on it and blew a steady stream of smoke into the night.

 

“You’ll never forgive me, will you?” he asked.

“Forgive you?” Pagan asked in wonderment.  The conversation seemed to be veering in so many directions that it was impossible to keep up.

“For having seen you at your worst,” Tony said. “Meaning I know the truth. And you’ll never forgive me for that.”

 

“You don’t know anything about me,” Pagan snapped.

Tony nodded thoughtfully, as if Pagan’s answer had confirmed what he had said rather than denied it.

“I knew it might happen, when you called me. That later you might resent me. We hate the ones, sometimes, who know our secrets.”

“What is it that you think you know?” Pagan said, anger coming to his defense. "And of course, I don't _hate_ you. What rot."  

“Don’t you? What would you call it, then, what you’ve done? Can you imagine, what it was like, finding you had simply disappeared? Not having the slightest idea what had become of you?"

 

Pagan sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think . . . I didn’t know . . .”

But Tony kept on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Didn’t think _what_? Didn't think I gave a damn? No, you didn’t think. You didn’t think at all. Because it made absolutely no sense, any of it. Some man falls out of the sky with a smile and smoke and mirrors and suddenly you go tearing off to France. You want to know why you went off with Bixby? I can tell you why. Because he was there.”

Pagan felt as he’d been slapped across the face.

“That’s a horrible thing to say. My God . . .,” he managed at last. And then, “Why are you so angry?” Because despite his quiet words, that was it, that’s what was different: he was angry.

 

“Because I was also there,” Tony said.  

Pagan didn’t understand.

“Don’t look like that,” Tony said, mashing out his cigarette on the stone ledge.

“Like what?”

“So utterly dumbfounded. You knew. You’ve always known.”

“Known _what?”_

“We were in the rowboat,” Tony said. “And I asked you. And, then, you gave me quite a different answer.”   

Pagan raked his mind over and through memories and the rowboat and there were so many days they had gone out in the rowboat and Tony had brushed his hand along his cheek, pushing his hair back from his face, and  . . . Oh.

Was that it?

Pagan laughed. Was that all?  “But I was eighteen. I didn’t know what you were on about.”

But Tony was still looking solemn. “Eighteen is plenty old enough, I would say.”

“But I wasn’t like you, any of you. You were together, at boarding schools, going to parties, learning how to navigate the world. Until I got to Oxford, I had spent most of my life hiding in my room. I just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. And, then, you all were always like that.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Making jokes. Speaking in double entendre. It none of it ever . . . meant anything.”  

Tony looked down at his silver lighter, turning it in his hand. It glimmered for a moment, under the light from the broad windows, and then he returned it to his pocket. “Perhaps, that’s true,” he said. “But it’s also true that you must have changed your mind on that score at some point.”

“I don’t know. I don't know what you're trying to say, trying to ask."

"Why?" Tony said. "I'm asking just that. Why?" 

"Why _what_?" Pagan asked, in a growl of frustration. 

"Why Bixby? You can’t be in love with him, with someone who you admit has lied to us all from day . . .”

 

But Pagan had had enough, enough of all of this, of talking in circles and dragging out memories of things past . . . right on New Year’s Eve, when they should all be moving forward.

 

“Maybe because he doesn’t rake me over the coals like this,” Pagan snapped. “Maybe it’s because he just accepts me as I am and doesn’t demand all of these explanations.”

But Tony only shook his head. “That’s because he doesn’t know any different.”  

 

And it was there: it wasn’t a slashing wound, not like that blow that Mason Gull had dealt him at the Bodleian, but something deeper, a knife plunging straight into his gut.

 

Pagan stood up and took a few steps back, casting his face into a mask of stone, trying to salvage what he could of his dignity. “No. I don’t suppose he does. He met me too late to know any different, didn’t he? Is that what you're getting at?" 

 

“For Christ’s sake, don’t cry, Pagan.”

“I’m not _crying_ ,” he said. But his voice was shaking.

Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“I don’t think you are. And the path divides and divides and divides, and even in some universe where you . . . where we. . . it would never . . . Because you’re right. Because you _do_ know. And I would never be your equal. You’d just rub my face in it at every . . . “

Tony looked stricken at this. “I would do no such . . . “

“Of course, you would! You just did. " _That’s because he doesn’t know any different."_ You think I don’t remember? You and Kay? Talking about me in the third person. Like I wasn’t even there.”

At least Tony had the decency to look a bit contrite at that, because, after all, he _did_ think to call, that very first day. He had forgotten that he had wanted to come back to England, but that he dared not call Tony, precisely because of _this,_ the lecture he knew would be in wait for him. 

 

“You think I didn’t want to call you when I got to France? I did. And I didn’t do it. You want to know why? Because I knew you would treat me this way, I knew you would make me doubt my judgment.”

Tony spread his hands wide. “But that’s just my point. You _should_ doubt your judgment. You’re obviously . . . “

But Pagan cut him off. Whatever it was he was preparing to say, Pagan knew, instinctively that it was something he didn’t want to hear.

“I’m not _what?_ I’m not the same as I was? No, maybe I’m not. What does that matter? We none of us are the same, are we?”  

“But Pagan, can’t you tell the difference? He’s got all the depth of a stock report. He’s not even a real person. You were the one who was so full of contempt for the man, and that fake painting he acquired....”

 

Why were they always so dismissive of Bixby? He never spoke of them thus. They were all just jealous of him, jealous because Bix knew what they did not.

 

“Shallow things don’t cast shadows,” Pagan said stiffly. “It takes a talent, you know, to pull off the trick.  Maybe there is something to be said for smoke and mirrors. Maybe there is something to be said for a trick of the light.”

 

Tony looked at him for a moment, and then covered his face with one hand. And then he was shaking.

Pagan drew closer. “Tony?”

And then Tony pulled his hand away, and he was laughing, shaking with silent laughter.

“Tony?” Pagan asked again.

Was the man quite mad?

But then he wiped his eyes and drew a long, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your expression. I’ve just never heard such a paean to superficiality before. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry, honestly." 

 

Pagan scowled. It was funny how people who made such a hash of their lives always seemed to insist that happy people were by definition insubstantial, but there you were. Misery didn’t signify profundity any more than happiness signified stupidity, in Pagan’s experience.

But perhaps Tony hadn’t yet discovered that.

 

“So are you not angry, then?” Pagan asked, cautiously.

“No,” Tony said, simply. “No.”

Pagan slowly returned to the ledge of the fountain.  They sat for a while in silence, listening to the sounds of the party drifting out into the night air.

“Quartet’s not bad,” Tony said.

“No,” Pagan agreed. “They’re actually quite good.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and the strains of the violin soared out into the garden and wafted up like smoke to the stars. Then, he hopped down off of the fountain ledge and started to walk away, out into the trees.

“Where are you going?” Tony called. “Don’t you want to go back into the party?”

“No,” Endeavour said.

“Well, where are you going?” he asked. “It’s dead cold out.”

“I just want to clear my head. I think I may have had a little too much Scotch.”

Tony rolled his eyes at that, and Endeavour turned again to go.

“Pagan!” he called.

Endeavour turned around.

“Just don’t . . . don’t be a stranger, all right?”

“All right,” Endeavour said.

Although he suspected that was just what he was.

 

And how should that be?

Because he had called him Pagan.

That had to be it.

 

But Endeavour had already been so thoughtless, so careless.

Which was worse: to let Tony persist in calling him by that name, one which he had abandoned years ago?

Or to tell Tony that he no longer even recognized it, the only name Tony had ever known him by?

It must be the latter, surely.

Wasn’t it?

 

*****************

Bixby recognized fear when he saw it. Ames and whoever the hell was in on this development front had something on all of these men, that much was certain.

It was clear in the waver of their eyes, the hesitation in their speech, the trace of uncertainty in the words of men who were used to being the ones calling the shots.

Blackmail, then. And it shouldn’t have been surprising. Wasn’t that the implied threat in his own conversation with Ames?

 

_Or perhaps you do, isn’t that right, Mississippi?_

_“And Josiah walked with the Lord?”_

 

I know who you really are. That’s what Ames wanted to tell him.  

 

Well, what did Bixby have to fear?

He had hardly lived a life hiding in the shadows—it was all bound to catch up to him sooner or later.

The men in New York who had tried to take him for a fool and who ended up finding themselves the ones outfoxed had been old even back in ‘56. They might very well be dead by now, or at least toothless, without bite.

 Hayward the Fourth, though, had been only a few years older than he was; it wouldn’t be surprising if he wasn't still furious about the fact that his old man, Trey Bixton, had left half of his fortune to a hired hand’s boy.  But, by God, Joss had earned all of it and more. He had given Bixton better advice than any suit from the city.

And it was he who was there to hear Trey Bixton’s last words, his dying wish, not Hayward Fourth. What did Fourth ever do anyway, but drink and run up debts in Savanah? To hell with Fourth’s so-called “legal team.” Bixby knew what was right, what was fair and square.

 

If worse came to worse, Bixby could take his money and disappear. He had done it once before. Endeavour had followed him to France without knowing the truth, hadn’t he? Bixby was sure he would come with him now, if he needed to go.

Those bastards didn’t have a thing on him. 

Because Ames was right on one score. He did know how to start from nothing and build an empire.

 

But, there was this: Endeavour did seem to love the house in Lorraine. Bix wouldn’t want to uproot him from the place if he didn’t have to. He could run, sure, but how much better would it be to beat these thugs at their own game?”

“On the second?” Bixby asked. “At the Moonlight Rooms? Of course, I’ll be there.”

 

So, it was done, then. He would go to the party and find out all there was to know; whatever he uncovered was bound to be of help to Thursday.

And, more importantly, in doing so, he’d get himself the hell out of this mess.

 

It was a fine idea to have come out to the party. A success all around. And it was good for Endeavour, too, to get out of the house a bit. He actually seemed to like the quartet all right; Bixby had been worried they’d have a band. And . . . where was Endeavour?

Bixby looked through the crowd and spotted him over at the bar, talking with Sylvie. It was just like old times, catching a glimpse of him from across the room, knowing that later he’d find him, alone out under the stars. It had always given him a little thrill, back in the old days, to sense those eyes upon him, and know that later he would walk out into the cool of the night, and Pagan would be there, circling in through the trees, closer and closer. And then . . .

And . . .

But why was Endeavour looking so distraught? He thought he got on all right with Sylvie now, that he had even learned to laugh along with her delightful idiocies.

But no, his eyes were growing rounder and rounder and....

Of course that would have to be it. Bix had confided too much in Sylvie during Endeavour’s absence. Who knew _what_ she might be telling him?

Oh, Sweet Jesus.

Bix tried to make his way through the crowds to the bar, but by the time he reached it, Endeavour had gone, and Sylvie was alone, looking annoyed.

“What on earth, did you say to him?” Bix said.

But she just looked at him with a face full of disdain. “This is ridiculous.” she said. “You’re a Gemini. He’s a Libra. You’re both air signs. You should be communicating better than this. . .”

 

Oh, not this air sign thing again. They had heard this before. He could still remember Endeavour laughing about it in the car: “I don’t know. It certainly sounds like a lot of air to me.”

 

“ . . .  I know that he’s the cardinal sign in your relationship, but you’re going to have take the lead in this thing.”

“In what?” Bixby asked.  

Sylvie rolled her kohl-lined eyes. “I mean you should take him to the fucking doctor. Or just lump it and let him stay home and listen to his awful screeching records. I told you he’s agoraphobic. He must hate a party like this.”

 “That’s a bit of an exaggeration, surely,” Bixby said. “No one _hates_ parties. This one _is_ probably a bit too crowded for his liking, but he doesn’t _hate_ parties.”

“You are so self-absorbed,” Sylvie said. “That’s why I broke up with you, you know.”

Bixby was relieved to have that cleared up, at least. He never was quite sure which one of them had decisively ended their relationship. It had sort of just died on the vine, with a fizzle rather than with a decisive bang.

“I’m sorry, I know you love this sort of thing, but he hates it and will always hate it,” Sylvie was saying.

Bixby felt it then: the smallest shred of doubt. There _were_ far more people here than he had anticipated. It was quite possible that this wasn’t the wisest idea he’d had. But then again . . .

“But he’s fine now,” Bixby protested. “He doesn’t even collect fir cones anymore.”

“Fir cones?” Sylvie asked, raising one perfectly-arched brow.

“Never mind,” Bix said. “My point is, you don't know him as well as you think. He's as stubborn as they come. If he really hadn't wanted to come, he would have put that blue dog t-shirt on, and I never would have gotten him out of the front door."

"Blue dog t-shirt?" Sylvie asked, bemused.

"Do you know which way he went, at least?” Bixby asked. 

She waved the hand holding her glass, indicating a general direction with one long finger.

“That way,” she said. “Good luck finding him in this place.”

 

Well, he certainly didn’t need luck to find Endeavour. He was probably just sitting somewhere closer to the music.

And Endeavour was right in a way; it was better to maintain a certain amount of time apart during the party. He hadn’t realized until tonight how accustomed he had become to their own small circles in France, where they were given much more lassitude. The law had changed in Britain, but attitudes hadn’t seemed to have changed in the slightest. 

********

He found Endeavour sitting on the edge of the dock, alone, looking out over the black water. In the darkness, the outlines of the trees on the opposite shore were reduced to mere shadows, the sounds of the party rarified by the crisp, clear air.

 “Ah,” Bix said. “Great minds think alike, I see.”

Endeavour turned and quirked a smile at that.

“Where did you go? I couldn’t find you,” Bixby said.

“Oh. I was just listening to the music.”

“Told you the party wasn’t so bad.”

“Yes,” Endeavour said. “The quartet was good, actually.”

Bixby eased himself down on the dock beside him and reached for his hand. But Endeavour pulled it away, shoving something in his pocket.

“What do you have there?”

“Nothing,” Endeavour said. Then he straightened and took his hand in his.

Bix frowned. “Your hand is like ice. Have you been out here long?” he asked.

“Just for a while,” Endeavour said, shrugging one shoulder.   

Bixby reached and took his other hand, too, and held them both between his, so that Endeavour had to turn slightly to face him.

“Is it almost midnight?” Endeavour asked.

Bixby twisted his wrist so that the face of his watch was pointing up. “Twenty seconds,” he said.

The bowed their heads so that they were just inches apart, both watching the second hand on Bixby’s watch tick.

 “Four,” Bixby said. “Three. Two. One. Happy New Year.” And then they both leaned forward, coming together in a kiss.

 

A burst of cheering erupted from the direction of the house. 

 

“My watch is a bit fast, perhaps,” Bix said. 

“Well,” Endeavour murmured. “Just to be on the safe side then ...”

And then, Endeavour reached his warmed hands up to frame Bixby’s face and kissed him again—a slow, soft kiss with just the slightest edge of need, as if it had been an age since they last had met.

Which, in a way, Bixby supposed, it was. Or, at least a year, at any rate.

****

Thursday wasn’t anxious to answer the door, wasn’t anxious to have the remnants of his bleak New Year’s Eve revealed to the light of day. He crossed through the hall and into the kitchen to dispose of the empty bottle before going to answer the bell, running a cursory hand through his hair as he went.

It was Bix again, of all people. Wasn’t he going to some to-do last night? How was it the man could look so fresh, so impeccable on New Year’s Day morning?

“’Lo, Bix,” Thursday said. “Where’s Morse?”

Bixby huffed a laugh. “He’s dead to the world,” he said. “I don’t expect to hear him stir much before two.”

Well, that’s just dandy, Thursday thought. All we need is for one of those letters to come in while Morse is out for the count—colossally hungover no doubt. And today he could be of real use, too, since all of the colleges were closed for the holiday.  

But of course, it wasn’t as if Thursday was in much better shape to report for duty.

“Actually, I wanted to speak with you. Alone,” Bix said.

Thursday wasn’t sure if that bode well. “Come on in, then. Make yourself at home.”

Bix followed Thursday down the hall and into the den, sinking with easy grace into one of the armchairs. Thursday sat in the one opposite and prepared to hear the worst.

“I got an invite. To a party tomorrow evening,” Bixby said. “It’s being held at some club in Carfax. Holloway has reserved the whole place. ‘He wanted to get all of the interested parties together,’ is what he said.”

“So, you’re thinking of going to this thing then, seeing who shows?”

“That’s what I was thinking, yes. Endeavour said Ames is like a Hydra. Maybe one of the hidden heads will show itself. Or all of them, in fact.”

Thursday considered Bix for a moment. The lad certainly felt he was up into his eyeballs in something, that was for certain. It was obvious what he was thinking.

 

The only way out was through.

 

“All right,” Thursday said. “But I can’t allow you to go alone. You’ll need to take an officer with you.”

Bixby laughed. “I can hardly bring Endeavour. This isn’t that kind of party, where all and sundry of that set simply show up. It’s invitation only.”

“You can bring a date though, can’t you?” Thursday asked.

Bixby looked at him uncertainly. “Yes, but that still disqualifies Endeavour, I’m afraid. This isn’t some literary soirée in Paris. Besides, I’d rather Endeavour not know anything about all this.”

Thursday hummed. He could just bet Bix didn’t want Morse to know. But that was another matter.

“Wasn’t thinking of Morse. I was thinking of WPC Trewlove.”

To Thursday’s surprise, Bixby looked chagrined at that.

 

If there’s anyone who you would think would be a bit more open-minded about a woman on the police force, you'd think it might be Bix, who wasn’t exactly falling in line with convention himself. 

 

“What’s this?” Thursday asked. “She’s a perfectly able officer. One of the best on the . . . “

“No, no,” Bixby said. “It’s not that, old man. It’s just that. Well. Isn’t she awfully young?”

Oh, so that was his excuse, was it? It wasn’t because she was a woman that he lacked faith in her, but because she was young?

“Not any younger than Morse was when he started on the force,” Thursday said.

“No,” Bixby said again. “What I mean is, well, she must be eight years younger than I am. Won’t she make me look awfully ridiculous?”

 

Thursday sat, stunned. He could scarcely believe it. The man was offering to go undercover to a party possibly organized by a ruthless gangster, and he was worried about his vanity?

 

“You may scoff,” Bixby said. “But I vowed when I made my first million that I’d never be one of those old geezers who makes himself believe that a woman half his age is head over heels in love with him. Poor delusional sods. They look absolutely pathetic.”

Thursday just shook his head. Bix goes about with Morse, and then thinks he’ll look odd with Trewlove? Go figure.

“Well, Trewlove isn’t half your age, so don’t worry about it. Unless you’d rather I arranged Strange to accompany you?  He might make you look like you’ve lost some weight.”

Bixby raised his eyebrows. “Ha ha, old man,” he said.

“All right, that’s settled then.”

Thursday was going to add more, but then he hesitated. It was none of his nevermind, but still.

 

“You sure you don’t want to let Morse know about all of this?” Thursday asked.

“I’m sure,” Bixby said. “I don’t want him to worry.” Then his face brightened. “Maybe you can take him out to a pub, sort of keep him distracted, lest he get wind of anything down at the nick.”

Thursday regarded him steadily.

“What is it?” Bix asked.

“You don’t want him to worry,” Thursday repeated. “That’s just the excuse I gave myself for not telling Win about that loan I made to Charlie.”

But Bixby was already rising to go. “This is altogether different,” he said.

“If you say so,” Thursday replied.

It probably was for the best. He wasn't all that keen to get Morse involved in this at any rate. And he was hardly one to give advice.

****************

The important thing was not to look too eager.

 Fancy was surprised to have gotten the call on New Year’s Day. He had just been heading out the door, on his way to the station to check in on duty—New Year’s Day morning was the sort of shift you got stuck with when you were lowest on the totem pole—when the phone rang.

It was a young man who spoke with a slight West Indian lilt, offering to meet him at a corner along the Brennan Street Market. With a case of Killoran.

 

The city was a mere ghost of a city. Quiet. The windows of the shops dim, the streets largely deserted.

At the end of Brennan Street Market stood a young man, casting surreptitious glances over his shoulder. It could only be Fancy’s point of contact.

Fancy shoved his hands in his pockets, flipped his fringe into his eyes, and prepared to play the role of the petulant undergraduate.

“It’s a bit late now, though isn’t it?” Fancy said as he approached. “I wanted it for a party last night.”

The young man’s soft, dark eyes widened. He was young. Younger than he was. Fancy, who had so often felt his lack of years, so often felt wrong-footed, felt like a rock in comparison to this poor sod.

“You’ll still pay, though, won’t you? You wouldn’t agree to meet me all the way out here and then change your mind now, would you?” the man asked.

“Let me see what you’ve got. It’s real Killoran, is it? Not some cheap stuff you’ve put in empty bottles?”

“No, it’s real. Look. The seals have not been broken.”

Fancy pretended to think it over.

“If you take it, I can throw in a little something extra, right? Something better than whiskey,” the young man said.

Fancy realized, too late, that he should snorted at that. Should have said something to the effect of “What could possibly be better than whiskey?” with a bored, affected drawl.

Instead, he simply looked at him and asked, “What do you mean?”

For a moment, the young man considered him, but then he looked away, as if he could not bear to look him in the eye. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ve forgotten it.”

Then the young man shrugged. “So, do we have a deal, mon? On the whiskey?”

“All right,” Fancy said.

 

***********

By the time Fancy had returned to the nick, Thursday was there, speaking to a man and a woman, even though Thursday wasn’t scheduled for duty that day. But that wasn’t strange; it was as if he lived in the nick lately.

As Fancy drew nearer, he realized it was the couple he had spoken to a few days earlier, the West Indian couple, Derek Jacobs’ parents. Mr. Jacobs sat in one of the office chairs by Strange’s desk, his strong face stoic and expressionless. His wife sat just as straight by his side, with a similar expression— the only difference being two tear tracks shimmering in straight lines down her cheeks.

Fancy had been trying to reach them to ask for a photograph of their son; several times he had gotten no answer, but on the last try he had managed to leave a message with Mrs. Jacobs’ sister, who had come to stay for Christmas.

“Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs are here with a photograph,” Thursday explained. “And this,” he added, holding up a red letter.

“It was on our doorstep this morning,” Mr. Jacobs said. “In an empty whiskey bottle.”

“I don’t know what it might mean,” Mrs. Jacobs said, “but it sounds frightful doesn’t it?”

Thursday handed him the letter.

 

_And rest can never dwell, hope never comes_

_That comes to all, but torture without end_

_Still urges and a fiery deluge, fed_

_With ever-burning Sulphur consumed_

Fancy looked up at Thursday. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I think we need to go out to Morse’s. And to find this young man,” Thursday said, handing him the photo.

Fancy took one look at it, and his stomach flipped. It was him—the young man whom he had just met about some black-market whiskey.

If this was all tied in to the deaths at Lonsdale, as Morse seemed to think, then the “something better than whiskey” Jacobs had mentioned must have been heroin.

With another lurch, Fancy realized that Derek Jacobs had tried to show him a mercy, had tried to keep him from greater harm.

It was too bad Fancy hadn’t returned the favor. If he had asked for a photo at once, the first time Derek Jacobs’ parents had come into the nick, he would have recognized him, could have talked to him, perhaps. “You look like you’re in over your head, but there’s a way out of this. Your parents are looking for you, your parents want you home,” he could have said.

It couldn’t be so, that though his carelessness, someone should come to harm.

He looked to Derek Jacobs’ parents and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

Mr. Jacobs remained staring stolidly ahead, as if he could barely rise above his sorrow, but Mrs. Jacobs dissolved into tears, seemingly awash with relief, looking at Fancy with a faith he scarcely felt he deserved.

 

*******

On the drive to Morse’s, Fancy told Thursday about the meeting at Brennan Street Market. The lecture was nothing. The things Thursday told him weren’t half as accusatory as the things he had told himself.

“Well,” Thursday said grimly. “You won’t forget to ask for a photograph the next time, I s’ppose.”

“No, sir,” Fancy said.

Fancy pulled the Jag up to a large stone house that looked far beyond the pocket of any former constable. You wouldn’t think there would be much money in poetry, but there you are. Wouldn’t be the first thing Fancy’s father was wrong about.

A man with dark hair and a dapper suit answered the door. “Inspector? Is everything all right? I didn’t expect you so soon,” he said, stepping back and leading them into the hall.

“We got another one of those letters. The colleges are all closed today. Tell Morse we need him to hustle himself down here and take a look at this thing,” Thursday said, showing him the paper. 

The man looked the paper over, his eyes widening. “I’ll tell him you’re here,” he said, handing it back before he turned toward a wide stairway.  

Thursday wandered into the drawing room and collapsed on one of the couches with a grunt. Fancy began crossing the room to sit next to him when his eye was caught by a record player on a table and a basket of records.

What was it Morse told him last summer? That there was a rock song that he thought he liked once, but then he had changed his mind? He had been awfully enigmatic about it. Fancy couldn’t help but wonder . . .

He was just thumbing through the first few records when Thursday cleared his throat meaningfully. Fancy looked up.

“I wouldn’t,” Thursday said.

Fancy snatched his hands away right in time, right as the dark-haired man returned with a rather disheveled looking Morse, who cast him an imperious look, as if he might reduce him to ashes with a glance if he thought that he might have been messing about with his records.

Touchy sod.

He looked a mess, to be honest. Hair standing out all end. Christ. He even had a leaf twisted into one spiraling wave. He must have been hitting the sauce pretty hard last night.

“There’s been another note?” Morse asked.  

Thursday handed it to him without a word. He took the note and read it.

 

 “It’s Milton,” he said. “Paradise Lost. The lines that follow are:

 Such place Eternal Justice has prepared for those rebellious; here their prison ordained in utter darkness and their portion set as far removed from God and light of Heaven as from the center thrice to the utmost pole.’”

 

“Those rebellious?” Thursday asked.

Morse nodded. “Referring, perhaps, to someone who hasn’t followed Ames’ orders as he wished? Now condemned… to a place of utter darkness . . . to. . .” Morse tilted his head thoughtfully. “There are some medieval panels depicting the Last Judgment over at the Ashmolean. . . And it would be closed today, dark.”

“So, by that, a place eternal, far from God and all that, that’s like hell, isn’t it?”  the dark-haired man asked.

And then, with a jolt, Fancy realized that the man must be Bixby, Morse’s well . . . Whatever he was.  

He seemed pretty smooth.

 

Fancy for the life of him couldn’t understand what he saw in a mess like Morse.

 

Yes,” Morse said. “That’s the general idea.”

“Could it be Hades?” Fancy asked.

Morse frowned. “Different culture. Hades is the Greek underworld; it’s not the same thing as a Christian hell,” Morse said. Then he frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“There’s a jazz club. In Cowley. It’s called Hades. I just thought . . . I suppose it’s closed today, isn’t it? Probably was open last night until early hours.”

Morse seemed to consider this. “Let’s try there,” he said.  

*********

They kicked in a back kitchen door, and at once, all of their eyes seemed to fall on a set of large, wooden crates, stored beneath a window. Morse and Thursday fell upon the largest and ripped off the top. Inside, was the young man, Derek Jacobs, unconscious, his eyes blindfolded and mouth sealed with tape.

  
Thursday felt for a pulse. “He’s alive,” he said, his whole body seeming to sag with relief, as he ripped off the tape.

Fancy felt a wide smile break across his face. He was out of breath from running, and laughter was bursting in nervous gusts from his chest.

Morse meanwhile was looking troubled.

“It’s Debbie Snow,” Morse said.

“What’s that?” Thursday asked.

“It’s just like before, with Gull,” he said. “There are air holes in the crate. This was just a game, a distraction.”

“A distraction from what?” Fancy asked, uncertain as to why Morse was looking so bloody gloomy. “We beat them, this time, didn’t we?”

Even as he spoke, Jacobs was slowly stirring to life.

But Morse looked unconvinced.

“A distraction from whatever they’re planning. A distraction from what’s to come.” 

 

**************

The next morning, Thursday called him and WPC Trewlove into his office, to brief them on the undercover.

Fancy wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Shirl going out with that suave old Bixby, into a party with a bunch of rich bastards who thought they were God’s gift to the world, even if was just in show.

At least he’d be right outside, on surveillance.

And then, he could see it all, playing out before his eyes. Some sod at the party would get a little too handsy, and Trewlove would shove him away, storm out the door incensed, but the posh bastard would follow her out onto the sidewalk, pleading his case. And Fancy he would be there, in the car. “This bloke bothering you Shirl?” And Fancy would belt him one, and Shirl would look at him, eyes wide, and say ...

“Are you getting this Fancy?” Thursday asked.

“Yes, sir,” Fancy said.

Oh, but who was he kidding? If one of these posh sods got too fresh with Shirl, she’d be just as quick to belt him one herself. Ha! There was nothing to worry about. She’d give him what for. 

“If there is anything remotely funny about any of this, could you please enlighten us?” Thursday asked.

Fancy blinked.

“No, sir,” Fancy said.

“Oh, and another thing, we’re leaving Morse out of this. Conflict of interest and . . . where is Morse? I thought it would be a right pain, keeping him out of the way today. Why doesn’t he come into the nick at all anymore? Last summer we couldn’t keep him out of here.”

“I think that might be down to Cheif Superintendent Dawkins, sir,” Trewlove said. “He let it be known, that, well, that he didn’t want “ _someone_ _like_ _that_ ” hanging about unless he was helping in a specific instance.”

Thursday’s jaw tightened at that. “That bastard,” he said.

“Morse looked almost as if he was shaking the dust from his feet as he left,” Trewlove said, in that oddly monotone way she had sometimes. “So, I suppose I wasn’t surprised that he hasn’t come back into the station.”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said. And in a moment, his face was full of thunder.

Did Trewlove know what she was doing, expressing the situation quite like that? It was a bit like stirring up a hornets’ nest—one that housed two particularly fierce hornets, wasn’t it?

But when Fancy looked at her, he was sure he saw it there on her face— just the barest trace of a smile.

*************************

One of the upticks of being one of the only female officers in the nick was that Trewlove had so far been spared the awkward situation of having a trusted colleague’s fellow make a move on her.

Until today.

She was sitting on the edge of the couch in a black evening gown, her eyes fastened on the ticking carriage clock on the table, when a voice wafted down the stairs. “Uh, Miss Trewlove, would you mind coming up here for a moment?”

Trewlove rolled her eyes. If Bixby was up there waiting to greet her in nothing but a dressing gown and a sultry expression in his dark eyes, he’d find out quickly enough where her loyalties lie.

She had seen men like this countless times before, suave and confident, the kind used to having women throw themselves at their feet.

And Morse seemed so intelligent, too.

Trelwove for the life of her couldn’t understand what he saw in a cad like Bixby.

 

She came in through the door with a sigh, steeling herself for what could only be an incredibly awkward confrontation.

 

Instead, she found him fully dressed, looking anxiously into the mirror, holding one tie up to his collar, and then another.

“Which one of these do you think suits?” he said.

She could barely suppress a laugh.

He smiled at her in the mirror in reply. “I know, I know,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a monumental decision. Endeavour usually helps me with this sort of thing, but he’s been so distracted with all this, he forgot to put anything out for me this morning. I think he’s lost track of what day of the week it is to be honest, and can’t quite get back on schedule.”

Day of the week? What was the man on about?

“Can’t you hurry?” Trewlove asked. “We’ll be terribly late.”

 But Bixby just raised one eyebrow, looking at her in the mirror as he held up a third tie. “Better to be fashionably late than unfashionable,” he said with an air of one who feels he has all the time in the world.

“Does it matter?” Trewlove asked. “We don’t really care what opinion these people have of us, surely?”  

“Haven’t you heard of the great director, Sergei Plonski?” Bixby asked.

“No.”

“He always insisted that all of his actors be fully dressed according to the period of the piece . . . down to small details that the audience would never see. And why? The audience might not know, but the actors would.”

He held up a final tie. “This one, I think.”

“It’s perfect,” Trewlove said. Although at that point, she would have said a watering can made a becoming hat, if she thought it might get him out the door.

 

*****************

It just wasn’t right that Thursday and Mrs. Thursday not be together. It simply went against the natural order of things. They just went together . . . well, the way Mondays went with cheese and pickle.

Endeavour sat his pint down and said, “Have you considered ballroom dancing?”

“What?” Thursday asked.

“You could go over to her sister’s place, all dressed up, and offer to take her dancing. Like on a date. Like asking for an all new start. She’s probably looking for an excuse to forgive you, you know.”

“That’s rot. If she was looking for an excuse to forgive me, why wouldn’t she just forgive me then?” Thursday said.  

Endeavour wasn’t so sure. There were times when one listened to one’s head, when one was _really_ looking for any justification to follow one’s heart.

He took a draught from his pint, studying the circles of condensation on the table as he tried to think how he might explain.

But Thursday was already grumbling, “Poems on postcards, ballroom dancing—Win knows things like that aren’t my style.” 

Endeavour snorted. “Well, you had better make them your style, hadn’t you?”

Just then, Strange came bustling in through the pub door.

“Sir,” Strange said. “I was hoping to find you both here. Tyler’s just found another letter, down in the mail room of the nick.”

He thrust the note at Endeavour.

Endeavour took it and unfolded the paper carefully. And, as he read, his mind began to fall into a dark, endless fog; the words swimming before his eyes.

 

_Nevertheless, Josiah would not turn his face from him, but disguised himself, that he might fight in the valley of Megiddo._

 

And then Endeavour was talking, but his voice sounded as if it was coming from far away. And could they hear him?

“And the archers shot at the king Josiah, and he said unto his servants to bring him away. So, his servants put him into the second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. And he died and was buried in the sepulcher, and all of Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.”

He looked at Thursday. “Where’s Joss?” he asked.

Thursday looked at him as if he didn’t know for a moment who he was talking about.

“Bix,” Endeavour snapped. “Where’s Bix?”

The look on Thursday’s face was as good as a confirmation. He knew. He knew something. They all knew.

Endeavour felt the roar of blood pounding in his ears. He stood up so fast, that he jolted the table, spilling the beer in the glasses. 

“It’s a set up! It’s all been a set up!” he shouted.

And then he was tearing out the door, running he knew not where.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

“Morse!” boomed a voice from behind him.

But that didn’t mean he need answer; it wasn’t as if he any longer went by that name.

But then, one strong hand grasped him by the upper arm, spinning him around on the spot, so that he was face to face with Thursday. Endeavour struggled and twisted in the older man’s grip, but Thursday’s broad hand remained firm.

“You heard what I said!” Endeavour shouted, fighting to break free. “I’m not Nick Wilding!”

“You don’t even know where you’re going,” Thursday countered.

Thursday was scowling, his face dark, as if he was making his mind up about something. Then he turned to Strange. “I want you to get back to the station, get every man you can trust over to the Moonlight Rooms, understood?”

“Yes sir,” Strange said.

Someone let out an incomprehensible wail, and Thursday looked at him sharply. It was then that Endeavour realized that it must have been he who had made that sound.  But why shouldn’t he despair? He had said nearly those exact words once before, to no avail.

Strange looked stricken for a moment—and yes, he remembered them, too, didn’t he?—and then turned at once to go.

“And Strange!” called Thursday.

Strange stopped in the doorway.

“Hail Fancy on the car radio, and tell him, if something happens, he’s to stand to until he sees back-up.”

“Sir,” Strange said, and then he was gone, half-running out the door.

 

What had they done? What on earth had they done? Thursday’s hand was still locked on his arm, the grip so fierce it hurt, and then Thursday was guiding him, pulling him along, as he strode out into the night to the car.

He threw Endeavour into the passenger seat, hustled around the car, and got behind the wheel, starting the engine with a crank of the ignition and hitting the gas hard.

They were going, then. The realization that he was at least on his way, seemed to open something inside of him, so that he could find the words again.

 _“The Moonlight Rooms_!” Endeavour shouted. “The last time I was there I had to pull your arse out of the fire with nothing but some real estate files! How could you imagine anything remotely savory would be happening at _The Moonlight Rooms?”_

Thursday’s jaw was tight, his hands gripping the wheel, his eyes boring straight ahead, his gaze so sharp it seemed it might well bore right through the windscreen. “That was five years ago, Morse. The place has been under new management since then, not a peep out of the place. . . ”

And that could be so, Oxford had changed as he had changed, and neither of them were the same, were they? But if they had told him about whatever it was they had obviously planned, he would have known, he would have felt it down to his bones, that this was all wrong.

“ . . . It’s just a party, Bix said,” Thursday was saying.

 _Just a party._ Bix thought everything was _just a party_. What the hell was Bix doing? Infiltrating some meeting, by the sound of it.

Bixby was not the great actor he thought he was; he was in so many ways naïve. He was a peacock strutting about in a tiger’s cage, so damn sure of himself, so innocent of just how dark and deep the rot might seep. To Bix, a rude word at the card table, ugly gossip at a party were offenses to be met with frosty rebuke; of men like ACC Clive Deare, he knew absolutely nothing.

Deare.

And how much of this was his, Endeavour’s fault, because he was still, after all these years, afraid of Deare, a man dead now for years?

What had Endeavour done? He had given Thursday only the vaguest of hints that the latest message might pertain to a real estate deal, and then, he had packed up and gone home. If he had stayed at the nick, they never would have been able to hide this from him.

But he had let himself be chased away by CS Dawkins.

 

Endeavour was working now for a police station in Britain, not a publishing house in France. What was he expecting? A few sneers didn’t necessarily mean that Dawkins was anything like Deare.

 

But Endeavour had been afraid—afraid of finding himself once again on the losing side of the equation, and so he had kept his distance from the place. If he had stayed, he would have been able to put a stop to all of this.

 

And how could Thursday allow Bix to become involved in such a thing? But of course, Bixby could be charming, convincing, when he wanted to be.  Bixby belonged in a world of smoke and mirrors and colored lights.

Bixby belonged behind the goddamned hat stand.

********

Strange pounded into the station, with footfalls heavy enough to send typewriter keys rattling and telephone receivers wobbling in their rests.

“Sergeant Decker. I’ve just come from Thursday. We’re to get everyone over to the Moonlight Rooms. Now.”

“No can do, matey,” Decker said. “Orders.”

“Orders?” Strange sputtered. “From where?”

“Division. Anything comes out that way, we’re not to respond.”

It was like ice shooting in shards, sharp and cold, straight down his spine. Strange had heard that line before.

Strange had _said_ that line before.

He went to the cabinet and took out a gun. Then he went to the phone.

“What are you doing?” Decker said. “You haven’t been given permission to draw arms. Didn’t you hear?”  

“I heard you,” Strange said, tersely.  “Orders.”

Well, Strange thought, to hell with Division. Who exactly was Division, anyway? Division never had his back outside the Wessex Bank, or on a stakeout at two in the morning.

He had his orders. From Thursday. And he’d be damned if this time he didn’t follow them through.

 

**********

“Pagan!”

As soon as they pulled up to the club and jumped out of the car, it was apparent something was wrong. A small group of party-goers, elegantly dressed in suits and gowns, were streaming into the night, stumbling into the dark like lost sheep, oddly disheveled and bewildered. A few of the women were carrying their shoes in their hands, as if they had taken off their heels at some point to run. And, suddenly, it seemed as if it was darker than it should be, but then of course, it was January. 

“Pagan!”

And again, there was a name that was not his. He looked up to see Bruce, standing by the door with his left arm crossed so that he was holding his right shoulder in an odd sort of way. But Endeavour couldn’t respond; his mind was whirling, taking in the scene—there was a woman standing stalk still with blood splashed across the skirt of her white gown, broken glass, like shards of fallen stars, glittering on the sidewalk, and the black police Jag at the curb, the driver’s door thrown open. And then, Endeavour was running inside, Thursday at his heels.

“Morse!”

Morse. Pagan. Would no one ever call him Endeavour?

Perhaps not.

It was surreal; almost like a fever dream. He remembered that club so well, remembered roaming through the rooms with a photo of Georgina Bannard, standing and watching Joan dance with Peter Jakes, running in from off the train to Lincolnshire to find Thursday alone with the Kaspars.  

But now, the club had been completely redone—the first room was painted a deep, dark teal, with white columns and white vaulted ceilings and crystal chandeliers with so many glowing pendants that they were like soft diamond halos of light. . . and it was darker than it should be, and the light . . .

There were small tables with white cloths and delicate china and a long table with bright silver trays encircling an ice sculpture of a swan . . . and there were upturned tables and people splattered in blood, kneeling over bodies splattered in blood, and there was shouting and weeping and bullet holes in the woodwork, and “Fancy?”  

Looking out of place amidst the guests—even now—in his cheap dark suit, was George Fancy, his ranging limbs sprawled at awkward angles. “Fancy?” Endeavour said again, falling to his knees by his side. The boy was holding his hand to his waist, while a stain of red slowly blossomed across his white shirt. His dark eyes slipped open, and a rueful smile twitched across his thin face.

“Ah, you’re a sight for sore eyes. . .” Fancy said. “I was hoping you’d get wind of all this.”

He tried to sit up.

“Don’t move,” Thursday said.

“Wasn’t planning on going far, to be honest,” Fancy said, smiling weakly.  

And God, how could he make light of anything now?  He was just like. . .

Just then, there was a flurry of commotion. . . Strange and Tyler busting in the back door, arms drawn, followed by three of four others. They had come, but too late.

Thursday was pressing a handkerchief to Fancy’s side, and the two were talking, but Endeavour couldn’t follow their conversation. Strange and the others immediately began to crouch by other victims who were lying, alive or dead, amidst the wasteland of it all. And Endeavour was a police officer; he should be helping all of these people, too, but he wasn’t a police officer, and there was only one person he was looking for.

He got up and began moving through the room, his eyes searching through the ruins. The next room was a ballroom with wine dark walls and polished wood floors and arching woodwork, the wood polished so that it shone like glass. Delicate chairs lined the walls, and there, suddenly, at his feet, there he was: a man lying face down, a man in a perfectly tailored dark Italian suit, with dark trim hair, each strand—despite the surrounding chaos—lying perfectly in place.

Endeavour sank down to his knees and put his hands on the man’s shoulders and gently rolled him over and . . . “Bix?”

And the world was dark, and the face that he beheld was dark—dark with already congealing blood; his face had been completely shot away. It was as if someone had walked up to him, specifically, and fired a gun directly into his calm, dark eyes, firing the bullet at point blank range.

The room was spinning, violently and irregularly on its axis. Bix would have known, then. He would have known it was coming. And would he have smiled that gentle, closed-lipped smile? The one he gave to someone he considered a boor by way of silent reproof?

Endeavour took one tanned, broad hand in both of his, and suddenly his face was wet and cold and his mouth was full of salt and it couldn’t be . . . and it wasn’t real . . .

 

When Endeavour was in Scotland, and the small sea birds scurried at his feet, he had been happy, even far from Bix, because he knew that Bix was there, somewhere out there in the wide world, dealing cards or laughing or spreading stock pages across the floor of his study.  But this. This was not possible. It was not possible for Bix to go where Endeavour could not find him.

 

A world without Bixby was like a night without starlight. And the light was gone and Endeavour was gone; he had become darkness itself.

 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. Dimly, he recognized voices stemming from the other room—murmurs, cries of pain as someone was likely loaded onto a gurney. He recognized Max’s voice calling orders to the medics. He wished Max would come in here, to him, but, of course, he would be on double duty now.  In this moment, the living needed his help more than the dead.

They could wait. They could wait right here.

 

 “Christ,” came a hiss in his ear. And then, “Oh, no, no, no. Morse?” And rough hands were on his shoulders trying to raise him to his feet, but he would not let himself be led.

 

“Dr. DeBryn, could you help me get Morse out of here?”

“I have my hands rather full at the moment, Inspector,” Max called from the first room.

 

Endeavour never would have guessed that morning that he would never see Bix's face again. And now, there was no possibility even of a cold kiss goodbye. And then, the vomit rose to the back of his throat, and he could not bear to look at the face that was no longer a face, and so he looked down—and there it was, tucked lovingly in his pocket like a handkerchief—a letter on red paper.

 

And it was there. The final twist, the final irony—the red letters that had brought him to Oxford, the letters he had followed like a trail of scattered breadcrumbs that had led nowhere, that had led to this.

 

With one shaking hand, Endeavour reached into the pocket of the dark suit, and there it was, with the red letter—a gold gambling chip, embossed with an art deco _JB._ It was the chip he had once carried for luck. And did again, evidently. But when he had started, Endeavour could not say.

 

The chip in Endeavour's hand was like a hard, cold rebuke. It was his fault, all his fault. He had failed him twice over.

For when had Bix even gotten involved in this affair? When, he, Endeavour, had been wandering around in Scotland, surely.

And how had this night come to pass? Because he, Endeavour, had let himself be chased out of the nick by a man who only remotely reminded him of another man he knew long ago.

 

Endeavour let the chip fall to the floor and entwined both his hands once more around one of Bix’s. He traced one tanned finger with his thumb and tried to say he was sorry and . . . it wasn’t him.

 

Max was making his way across the room. Suddenly, he stopped short, and uttered a soft, surprised, “Oh.”

 

It wasn’t him.

 

Endeavour knew Bixby’s hands as well as his own, and the man could nearly be Bix’s identical twin, yes, but . . . he wasn’t Bix.

“It’s not him, it’s not him, it’s not him,” Endeavour was saying, and it was like a chant, a ladder he might climb out from where he was.

“Morse?” Max said, looking at him, his brow furrowed.

“Come away, now, lad,” Thursday said.

“It’s not him, it’s not him.” The words must have been coming out, because Max was nodding grimly.

“All right, then,” Max said, with an air of melancholy.  They were humoring him, they didn’t believe him, but Endeavour knew it was true. And that must mean Bix, the real Bix, might still be here somewhere, slowly bleeding out, while he held a stranger’s hand and wept.

 

And then there were footsteps, the unmistakable, confident steps of someone who walked in dark and starlit woods as if they were a boardroom, and then other footsteps, too, one pair of heavier ones, and a pair of lighter ones.

Then, he heard a voice—it was Bruce, calling to someone. “He went through here. They told us all to stay outside.”

 

And then, that warm and polished, perfect voice.  “What in the hell?” And then, “Endeavour?”

 

It was Bix and a young blonde woman, striding into the room, their steps perfectly in synch, looking impeccable and unharmed, glaringly out of place amidst the chaos and gore of the room. Behind them was Bruce, who was still holding his shoulder strangely, blood seeping through his fingers.

 

Bix looked down at the scene, of Endeavour kneeling by the body of a man who could be his doppelganger, and at once, his face became a mask, as he registered the horror of it all.  

And somewhere, someone let out a strangled cry, and then Bix was kneeling down, kneeling down and grasping him squarely by the shoulders, pulling him to his feet and turning him so he was looking away from the corpse, so that he was staring a winedark wall instead. Endeavour felt as if he could not stand properly, as if he was sagging slightly against him.

 

“Where’s George?” the woman asked briskly. “The Jag out front is empty.”

It wasn’t until she spoke that he realized the young woman was Constable Trewlove—Endeavour had not recognized her in an evening dress, her hair down and curled.

“They’re already loading him on an ambulance," Thursday said. 

Trewlove seemed to pale further at that, so Thursday hastened to clarify. “Shot in the side. Looks to be largely superficial, a graze, but they want him looked over, just the same.  Should be all right.”

She nodded stiffly and turned, stepping back through the upturned tables with sharp clicks of her heels, out toward the front of the club. 

 

Endeavour registered this exchange only dimly. He took as deep, steadying breath, inhaling the scent of Bix’s aftershave, a scent that made the world slow in its spinning.

 

“Christ, Bix, where were you?”  Thursday snapped. “We thought. . .

“I was late,” Bix said. “I made Trewlove late. I couldn’t pick out a goddamned tie.”

 

And it was there. Bixby was alive only because he, Endeavour, had been so hungover on New Year’s Day that he had slept half the day away. He hadn’t woken up until Thursday and Fancy had barreled in to the house with that note from _Paradise Lost._ And he had lost track of the days and he didn’t know this morning which suit to put out. And he did not want to put the wrong one out for fear Bix would notice he was not keeping the days straight . . . and . . . for that . . . for that random, ridiculous string of coincidences . . . Bix was alive, and some other man who he did not know had been shot point blank in the face.  

“Pagan?” Bruce asked, his normally haughty face white and drawn. “You need a Scotch?”

Endeavour quite thought he could do with one, actually, but he was Nick Wilding and he couldn’t speak.

“I don’t think so,” Bix said.

But then, seeing Bruce reminded him of that other glimmer of fear, the one he felt when he first saw Bruce outside. . .  but Bruce never would have left if she were somewhere here, would he?  It was only two syllables. He would manage it. 

“Where’s Kay?” Endeavour said.

Bruce’s face grew even grimmer, more drawn. “She decided to stay home, at the last minute. Rosie has a fever, and we didn’t both want to leave her.”

Endeavour wondered vaguely who Rosie might be, but he didn’t seem to be able to form the next question.

 

“What’s this?” Thursday snapped.

Thursday had spotted it then; he was kneeling by the body, the body of God only knew who, and he must have spotted it. He must even now be pulling the red note out from the pocket.

“Morse?” Thursday said, and though Endeavour's face was turned away, he could hear Thursday straightening. “Could you take a look at this?”

 _“Now_?” Bixby cried, and his voice was a bit higher than usual. “Look at him! Look at this _place!_ ”

“Morse is all right,” Thursday said. “This could be a matter of life and death.”

“What about _his_ life?” Bixby asked.

Endeavour turned around. The room was still moving and he still hadn’t fully found his voice.

“Morse?” Thursday asked.

“Endeavour, you don’t have to . . .”  Bix was saying.

But Endeavour shook his head.

He held out his hand for the note, and Thursday unfolded it, pressing it into his palm.

 

His eyes wandered over the words in the odd light.

 

_Senec and Plato call me from thy lore_

_To perfect wealth, my wit for_

 

All the air seemed to fly from the room. It was the only message thus far to break mid-line, putting a final, terrible emphasis on the two remaining words. The words tucked so carefully into the man’s pocket. The man who might have been Bixby. The man who, Endeavour knew now with horrifying certainty, had been mistaken for Bixby.

And it was impossible. And how could he tell them?  Especially with Bixby standing right there, Bixby who never worried when Thursday was on the Rose case, Bixby who could never imagine such an icy vein of pure malice existed in the world?

Endeavour handed the note back and gently shook his head.

“See he doesn’t know it anyway,” Bixby said.  

“The hell he doesn’t!” Thursday boomed.  “Morse!”

But he wasn’t Morse. He took Bixby’s hand in his, and he was Bixby, he was a freight train, but he was a freight train travelling through a tunnel and leaving all of it, every sound and feeling—save for Bixby’s living hand in his—far, far behind.

 

***************

Max would have scarcely believed he would ever be a witness to such carnage in Oxford. He felt like a lone medic on the battlefield, unsure where to go first.

Young Fancy’s wound had been fairly straightforward; Strange was able to act as an emergency medic until the ambulance arrived. He dearly would have loved to have had the time to ask the constable what on earth had brought him here, alone, into this chaos, but, it was necessary for Max to keep moving, from one person, to the next.

There were six guests in the club who were shot, but who had survived. And four bodies. Those who were well enough to have darted for cover outside, he left for the attending medics as they arrived on the scene.

The mix-up over Bixby had been ghastly. Max couldn’t get over that oddly eerie way that Morse had looked at him, chanting, “It’s not him,” when Max would have bet his best bottle of Glenfiddich that it was.

And later, he couldn’t help but wonder, given Morse’ reaction to that note, if it had been meant to be.

 

He had just set his field kit down next to the fourth and final body, when Thursday approached.

“Doctor.”

“Inspector,” Max said. What else was there, after all, to say?

“I mightn’t wonder if you would consider taking this home,” he said, holding out the red note.

Max could barely suppress a huff of exasperation. He was up to his elbows in the whole bloody evening as it was: surely, he wouldn’t be expected to try to decipher the enigmatic red letter as well?

“Surely, that’s a job for one of your detectives, Inspector,” Max said dryly.

Thursday sighed. “None of them are of much of a literary, bent, I’m afraid. And it’s far too late to try to ring someone over at the colleges. Shouldn’t be too difficult for you, I’m sure.”

Max hummed noncommittally, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves. One could only assume that the good Inspector thought that flattery might get him everywhere.

“What about Trewlove?” Max asked shrewdly.  

“She’s gone. Left in the ambulance with Fancy. I didn’t want to . . . It seemed as if . . . “

Max sighed. “Well, then, I suppose young Fancy will find himself well-tended. You’re sure Morse doesn’t have anything to say about this?”

Thursday shook his head.  “I’ve been taking statements, and I’ve left Bix till the last, hoping Morse might . . . but it’s not looking very likely.”

 

Max considered this. Then he said, “Very well, Inspector.”

He took the offered paper and tucked it inside his coat pocket.

Before he left, he’d take one last crack at getting Morse to talk about the thing. He really ought to spare them all the trouble.

*******************

 

Max was finally leaving, when he noticed that Bixby and Morse were still in the back of Thursday’s police car. Max wondered if Thursday’s strategy of leaving Bix’s statement to the last, hoping Morse might by then be sufficiently recovered to answer questions about that note, had at all panned out.

He glanced in the window as he passed, and the sight of Morse did not cause him comfort; the fellow looked nearly catatonic, slumping blank-eyed against Bixby’s shoulder.

 

There was nothing else for it. He wouldn't rest well if he did not at least check.

Max looped around behind the car and back around to the front, opening the front door and sliding into the passenger seat in as perfunctory a manner as possible.

“Morse?”

Morse’s unfocused eyes drifted up to him.

“Morse, are you all right? I want to talk to you about this paper,” Max said crisply.

But Bixby only looked bemused, his brows raised in that smooth and irritating way that he had. “He’s done in, old man. I must say, I can’t quite understand why you all keep harassing him about this thing. I thought Strange said he was here to consult. He’s hardly an employee.”

 _Employee._ The man spoke as if the police force were a business, as if one was responsible only for one's own narrow, line of duties. This note might well be someone’s death sentence. But it was pointless to discuss such things with the man, clearly.

But Morse should understand. Why the devil was he being so obstinate? Max couldn’t believe he didn’t recognize the thing. What was it he wouldn’t say?

"Morse?" Max said again. Morse looked at him vaguely, as if his thoughts were a hundred miles away. It was somewhat alarming. 

 

Max scowled and turned to Bixby. “Has he done this before?"

“No,” Bixby snorted, “but I can’t say he’s seen someone with his face blown off before, either. It’s a horror isn’t it? Even when he was with the police, I wouldn’t have imagined he would have seen something like that.”

Max, conversely, rather imagined that he would have. The grisly fate of the real Daniel Cronyn sprang most readily to mind.

 

Max appealed, once more, directly to Morse.  “Morse?”

Morse’s eyes slowly seemed to come into focus. He would take that as a sign that he was listening, then.

“Morse, what can you tell me about this paper?”

“I don’t know what it means, exactly,” Morse said, his voice slow and thick. “I have to think about it.”

“Morse, you must understand, someone could be in grave danger.”

“Nobody is in any danger,” Morse said.

“How can you be sure?” Max asked.

“I’m sure,” he said, heavily, and then he leaned his head back on Bixby’s shoulder, closing his eyes.

“Morse!"

“Just let him have a moment. Good God. Did you not see that place?”

 

 

Max felt himself losing patience. “Morse!” he said, once more. But Morse was breathing deeply and evenly, as if he had gone to sleep.

“Does he do that often?” Max asked.

“Do what, old man?” Bixby asked, politely perplexed, as if he didn’t know what Max was on about, as if someone falling asleep like that wasn’t the least bit odd.   

 

Well, of course, it was ridiculous to think that infernal Bixby might be of any use.

Max went to grab for his field bag. “Never mind. Tell Morse thanks for bloody nothing. And that I’ll see him in the morning.”

“Wait, now, Bixby said. “Don’t . . .  He’s trying, all right? What do you want from him. He . . .”

“He what?” asked Max shortly.  

Bixby considered him for a long moment, his tanned mask of a face impassive. In the dim light of the car, his eyes were so dark the streetlights shone like white mirrors in their depths. Then, quietly, so as not to wake Morse, he undid the clasps on Morse’s satchel, which Morse carried slung across his left shoulder to his right hip. Bixby pulled out a notebook and held it for a moment. Then, after another long moment, he handed it to Max.

What was this about? That Morse carried a notebook was no secret to Max. Max flipped it open and . . .  Oh.

It was bizarre—there were headings at the top of each page, repeating the day in bold letters, and then elaborate notes in miniscule handwriting, small, detailed drawings, and arrows circling around it all to lead from one point to another . . .

Max was suddenly reminded of visiting his great aunt’s house, of the notes she left about, meant to remind herself of this and that. Sometimes, his mother would go through the house and throw old notes away, so that his aunt, in her forgetfulness, would not repeat the tasks in an endless loop. “Water plants” one note had said. And the dear old lady had watered them until the leaves turned yellow and dropped.

“My great aunt keeps notes a bit like this,” Max said.

“Oh?” Bixby asked. “How old is she?

“Just gone ninety or so, actually.”

“Not just gone thirty or so?” Bixby asked.

 Max paused, and handed the notebook back to Bixby. “No,” he said quietly.

Bixby took the book back, his usual smooth face unsettled, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether or not what he had done constituted a betrayal.

“I just didn’t want you. . .,” Bixby said, almost to himself as much as to Max.  

“Didn’t want me what?” Max ventured.

Bixby shrugged. “Judging him, I suppose. Thinking he doesn’t care, that he’s not trying, that. . . " Bix stopped and shook his head, looking again, typically self-assured. "Look, old man, if he said no one is in danger, you can trust him on that. I'm sure it's nothing that can't wait till morning.”

Max nodded. “All right then.”

Bixby looked mollified. And then he asked, “Do you think we can leave now? If I didn’t know better, I’d think Thursday was leaving us to the end on purpose.”

Max considered them for a moment. “I’ll see if I can put in a word before I go,” he said.

“Thanks, old man.”

 

Perhaps Bixby was right. It had been a long night. It might be best to let Morse go, try to clear things up in the morning.

Max took a glance at this watch. It really was dreadfully late. He wondered if Edward might still be waiting for him at his house, or whether he had given up on the night and gone home.

He felt for the note in his pocket. He could tell right away the poem must be of the Renaissance era. With he and Edward working together, it might not take too long.

******************

Much of the world may have slept in the days following New Year’s, but Thursday had not been idle.

As soon as they had found Derek Jacobs, trapped in that wooden vegetable crate on New Year’s Day, Thursday had backtracked, going back over each case, questioning again certain witnesses— this time, keeping all that Morse had told them in mind.

 

And slowly, the threads began to come together, to form a tapestry, a coherent whole.

 

Simon Myette’s brother-in-law, who was hesitant to speak the first time ‘round, seemed almost relieved to talk when asked point blank about Cromwell Ames—and specifically, whether or not the mob boss might have expected anything from Myette as a fellow Jamaican expat.  

“One of his men came around, yeah,” he said softly. “He was trying to force Simon to make payments—protection money for the café. Simon said that he already paid protection money—he paid taxes in Britain for nearly fifteen years, to help fund the police.”

Thursday couldn’t help but grimace there. The man had put his faith in the system, then, and the system had failed him.

“The man told him he should show more loyalty and respect to a fellow countryman,” Myette’s brother-in-law said. “Simon told me that he said: ‘what country’s that? Haven’t I just told you I’ve paid taxes to Britain for fifteen years?’”

“But you don’t know who the man was, his name, this man who said he was working for Ames?” Thursday asked.

“No, mon. Sorry.”

 

So. As always, Ames managed to keep one step away from them. But it fit, what Morse had said— _the fair chain of love._ Simon Myette had dared to step outside of what Cromwell Ames saw as the natural order of things—the chain in which he himself stood as the top link.

 

Then there was Harold Newby. The lorry driver. Eddie Nero had been known to hit a truckload of Killoran Whiskey in the past—it was reputed to be a favorite brand of his.

Eddie’s band could unload a truck within an hour, leave it as empty as a polished shell. But to viciously beat the elderly driver to death? Never. Eddie was of the old school—much like he, Thursday, was, come to think of it.

Ames was of the younger generation— for whom everything—their guns, their drugs, and evidently, their gangsters—seemed to be deadlier.

The red letter was a clear calling card.

There’s a new game in town.

 

Stephen Lane, the cab driver, it transpired, did in fact owe money to Ames, according to a colleague. He had collected some protection money, but rather than turn it over right away, he tried to get a quick pay off by investing it in a friend’s shady import deal. Just as Morse had conjectured from that red letter, the one he said was a quote from _The Merchant of Venice._

 

But then, just as all threads began to weave together, creating a clear tapestry of Ames, everything began to unravel. 

 

Ronald Beavis. It took a lot of footwork, but Thursday tracked down the items stolen from the Wolvercote Trove to a locker in a train station, to which Beavis had the key. But why would Ames commission him for such a theft? What interest could a Jamaican mob boss have in some Anglo-Saxon bits and bobs? Was it symbolic? By acquiring ancient treasure from the conquered country, did he hope to show he had arrived?

 

What was the point of it? Professor Copley-Barnes seemed to be the one most put out by the whole affair.

 

And that’s when everything seemed to veer from town—from a simple, albeit deadly war for control between Ames and Nero—to gown.

Because the next victims tee-tottered back and forth—while the fate of Duke Anderson, the boxer, was a simple enough story to understand, what of Jerome Hogg? Where on earth did he fit in to the puzzle?

 

To make it more confounding, Hogg didn’t have just one enemy, but rather a whole slew of them.

The only people who appeared able to bear the man were his colleagues, George Chamberlain and Alexander Reece, who had long had rooms right across the hall from Hogg’s.

 “Do I know anyone who would wish Jerome harm?” Reece asked, in response to Thursday’s questions. Then he laughed. “Who doesn’t wish Jerome Hogg harm these days? Got to hand it to him, though. Who needs friends when you’re filling the coffers the way he is? I’m only sorry I didn’t think of such a book first.”

 

Was it as Morse had said? An alliance? Some disaffected don providing Ames with a wealthy, bored crowd to which to market his Chinese heroin—the don getting some sort of payoff, in the form of vengeance or money, in return?

Was it all just one more example of the oldest story in the criminal handbook—you scratch my back, I scratch yours?

 

And then, who was it who had phoned in those orders to Sergeant Decker? If Decker didn't recognize the voice, why didn't he get the man's name, for God's sakes?

 

Thursday wasn’t certain what was what anymore, but after the carnage of the evening, he was through getting yanked around. A shoot-out in front of a boxing club was one thing, but a shoot-out amidst the posh set?

News of that would not go down well.

 

Thursday had had a crew lie in wait at Ames’ club, and had him brought in for questioning. They didn’t have a thing to hold him on—besides reports of vague phone calls he had made to Bix and Chalbourne, Ames was always careful to keep an intermediary between himself and the action.

 

But he could certainly put the man on notice.

 

Strange came out of the interrogation room, looking solemn.

“Has Ames said anything?” Thursday asked.

“As little as possible sir. His brief is with him now. A big cheese up from London.”

“Claiming alibi?” Thursday grunted, clenching his pipe in his teeth.  

“A good dozen witnesses will swear he was elsewhere at the time of each of the killings, and earlier tonight, sir,” Strange confirmed.

“All bought and paid for presumably,” Thursday said. “Where was he tonight, allegedly?”

“Up in London. At the Bunny Club. There’s photographs to prove it."

“All right. Let him stew till morning and let him go, then,” Thursday said, throwing a set of files down in frustration. 

 

Elusive bugger. He was a damn sight smarter than Nero, make no mistake.

But that made him all the more dangerous.

 

If only Morse would have told him something about that note.

What was with Morse, anyway? He had come in that first day, stroppy as hell, demanding to go here and there, as if he planned to wrap up the damn case before his three o’clock book signing. Now, he wouldn’t even come into the nick, seemed almost scared of his own shadow.

Was there any validity to what Trewlove had said? About CS Dawkins?

But that didn’t sit right. Since when had Morse cared about running afoul of authority?

 

Well, that had to be it.

 

Once bitten, twice shy, maybe?

Why, Thursday ought to go into Dawkins’ office and . . .

 

“Sir, there’s a call for you,” Constable Tyler said.  

Thursday glanced at the clock. Christ. It was nearly half four. Who could be calling now?

Thursday nodded and moved across the room, picking up the receiver that Tyler had left resting on the desk.

“DI Thursday, Thames Valley,” he said.

“Inspector Thursday? This is Bruce Belborough. I wanted to add something to my statement. I think. Possibly.”

 

Well, that was informative.

 

“Yes?” Thursday prompted. “And what’s that?”

“It’s that red letter. That you showed Pagan. I. Well, I have one, too.”

“What’s this?” Thursday said, sharply.

“I’ve been on the phone with the others,” Belborough said. “And. Well. We all have them.”

Thursday grimaced. He was familiar enough with Belborough’s lot to have a pretty good idea who he might mean by “we.”

 

Thursday didn’t have the slightest idea what to make of it all. But he had a pretty good idea as to who might.

First thing in the morning, he was going straight to Belborough's pile on Lake Silence. And after that, he'd head right across to the other end of the lake, to see Morse.

 

 

*************

It was almost just like being back in medical school.

Max sat on the floor with Edward, with two strong coffees at their sides and books strewn all about on the carpet, methodically flipping through page after page of poetry.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Max asked.

“No,” Edward said. “Although when you first said you had brought some work home with you, I have to admit, I was slightly alarmed.”

Max laughed softly. “That is a fate that generally doesn’t fall to a pathologist, no,” he agreed.

Max turned another page of Spenser, when, suddenly, Edward startled and reached for the red letter.

“My God,” he breathed.

“What is it?” Max asked.

“It’s like. . . like a gift tag,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You said this note was found in the pocket of someone Morse had taken to be his lover, that Bixby fellow, is that right?”

“Yes,” Max said.

 

“To endeavour,” Edward said simply.

“To endeavour to do what?” Max asked.

“No,” Edward said. “That’s the end of that line. Just that."

 He picked up the book before him and read:

 

_“Farewell love, and all they laws, forever,_

_Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more,_

_Senec and Plato call me from thy lore,_

_to perfect wealth, my wit for . . . to endeavour.”_

Max sat for a moment, stunned.

_To endeavour._

_To Endeavour?_

 

 “Nobody is in any danger,” Morse had said.

 Because, after all, when had Morse ever considered himself to be somebody?

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

  

Trewlove glanced at the plain, circular clock on the blank white wall. She should be checking in on duty in half an hour, but the ward sister had said Fancy would be waking soon, and she didn’t want to leave without talking to him, without asking him a few questions.

 First and foremost being: What on earth had he been thinking, racing alone into that club? She knew he had a tendency—rather unlike her—to act first and think later—but surely that was taking matters a bit too far?

Although, oddly enough, it sounded as if his presence might have scared the shooters off. Trewlove wasn’t sure quite how one thin, painfully young constable might have managed such a thing; she only had an inkling that it might be so from a few words she overheard as a woman in blue evening dress gave her account of the night to Sgt. Strange. Trewlove had not stopped to learn the full story—at the time she had no other thought than to find Fancy.

 

 

Just then, Fancy began to stir. He turned his face and opened his eyes slowly—and then startled a bit, as though he was surprised to see her there. As soon as her presence seemed fully to dawn on him, his hand flew to his fringe, as if he wanted to tidy up his appearance, even now, dressed in a hospital gown, under a thin white blanket. 

“They stitched you all up,” Trewlove said, thinking a small instance of humor might put him at ease. “I _think_ it sounded as if they got everything back into the right place.”

She was rewarded by one of his typical grins. He sat up, a bit gingerly, and ran his hand again through his fringe, moving it out of his eyes.

“That’s good then. Hoping to get a few more years out of all this, at any rate," he replied, easing himself to lean more upright against the pillows. 

Trewlove frowned slightly at that. “More than a few, I should hope. But at the rate you’re going, I’m not sure if that’s likely.” Then she tilted her head, scrutinizing his expression. “What were you doing?” she asked. “Strange said he had called you and told you to stand down.”

Fancy looked slightly sheepish. “I dunno,” he said. “But what was I supposed to do, Shirl?  I could hear the shots, people screaming. Wasn’t as if I didn’t have any plan.”

“That’s good to hear. What plan was that, may I ask?" 

“My old childhood standby," he said, with a grin."The old Billy Goats Gruff ploy.”

 

She couldn't help but repress a small smile. “What’s this?” she asked. “You mean like the story?”

“Yeah," Fancy shrugged. "I’ve got two  older brothers, you see, all of them fairly big blokes. Well, there was an awful bully in our neighborhood, but I could always outwit him. All I had to do was pretend to see one of my brothers behind him. "Yell, ‘Hiya Tom!’ and the idiot world starle, give me time to hoof it out of there.” 

“All right," Trewlove said. "But how did that work in this example?”

Fancy shrugged. “I just ran in there and started shouting gibberish into my shoulder, as if I had a mobile radio, as if I had a whole army surrounding the place.  'Squadron 5 take that back stair.' Like that. It only took one of them to panic. It always does with blokes like that. Once one panicked, they all turned tail." 

Trewlove sat for a moment, mulling this over. “That was actually clever. Foolish. But clever.”

“I get a little kick of inspiration now and then. Speaking of which, what are you up to?" 

"I’m sure I don’t know what you mean," she said, crisply.

“Setting Thursday on Mr. Dawkins,” Fancy clarified.

Trewlove scowled. “Dawkins is an awful bully. That was hateful, how he treated Morse.”

Fancy shrugged, as if to concede her the point. “Still. I’d go careful around Thursday. Something is off with him. Any plan involving him might backfire." 

 

Trewlove felt a little twinge of doubt at that. It did seem so. But, still...

 

“I think we need Morse back in the nick to sort this out," Trewlove said. 'The case is all circles. It’s going to take more than shoe leather to solve this one. It’s going to take an intuitve leap.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about Morse," Fancy said knowingly. "Dawkins will be begging him to come back.”

“I suppose that’s true," Trewlove said. "A deadly attack at a posh gala?  That means no one is safe.”

“Yes,” Fancy nodded. “And Dawkins must know if he can’t put a stop to it, his career won’t be safe, either.” 

 

Trewlove frowned a bit at that, at the thought the man might be spurred to action only to save his career, but if that's what it would take to prompt him to make the right decision concerning Morse, she supposed she'd have to take it.

“Speaking of Morse,” she said, “you don’t think he’d say anything do you? About spotting us on the bridge? When he was out punting"?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t say so,” Fancy said. “I thought poets were all for a little more love in the world.”

 

Trewlove glanced again at the clock.

“Well,” she said. “I’ve best be going. I’m on shift in twenty minutes.” 

“All right,” Fancy said staunchly. 

Trewlove would have left him with a quick kiss goodbye, but now she felt flustered, and gave only a light wave by way of farewell.

Love, he had said.

Fancy was a boy she liked, it was true. But she wasn’t quite sure if he was the man she loved.

 **********

Once she was at the station, Trewlove went down the two flights of industrial stairs to the personnel department. She walked along the row of file cabinets lined up against the wall until she reached a drawer marked: MES-MUN

She opened the drawer and ran her fingers along the files. And there it was.

 

Morse, Endeavour

 

She flipped the file open.

The file photo did not much resemble the Morse she had first met last summer. He had the same angular cheekbones, stubborn chin and prominent eyes—But his hair was cropped shorter, his face, solemn and stoic, showing no trace at all of emotion.

At the bottom of the first page was a stamp:

 

Suspended, pending inquiry.

 

And then another.

 

Suspension lifted. 5 JULY 1967 Signed CS Reginald Bright.

 

She smiled, both at the dear old familiar handwriting, and at the knowledge that it had been Mr. Bright who had, evidently, finally cleared Morse’s name.

And then, after that, there was nothing.

No termination papers. No letter of registration.

Nothing.

Officially, then, Morse looked to be still on the books.

After all, it seemed he never put his papers in.

 ************

Thursday was in the nick early the next morning—to pick up any messages and get any updates that might have come in during the early hours—before he prepared to set off to Belborough’s place. His mind felt slow and heavy from lack of sleep, but he could not bear to stay home a moment longer. The eerie silence of the place was like nothing so much as a daily reprimand.

To think that there were so many times he would have given anything for five more minutes of quiet in the morning, five more minutes of sleep.

 

And now that was all that he _did_ have.

Nothing save a cold, smooth pillow beside his head, cobwebs and carryout boxes, and stretches of silence so deep that he could hear every creak of the house settling around him.

 

Thursday picked up a yellow message pad, but suddenly, his heart sank under the weight of an unbidden memory. And this time, it wasn't of Win, but rather of Morse, sitting sideways on the end of a garden swing, a book in Greek resting in his lap, talking of beauty and terror, while Bixby soared out over Lake Silence on a red hydroplane. 

 

_“In a house in Oxford there’s a lady, with bright eyes and beautiful soft hair. And every morning, she wakes up, and she makes her husband a sandwich—a different one for every day of the week. And maybe some mornings she’s running late to do something else, or her friend pops by to see if she wants to go shopping with her. But she’ll say, “Just give me ten minutes, Anne, there’s something I want to do first.” And she’ll go ahead and make it. And before he leaves, she tucks it into his pocket. And it’s there, like a square of love wrapped in wax paper, always . . . “_

_Morse smiled and repeated the words Thursday had once said so long ago, “...just like the fixed motion of the stars.”_

_Thursday was silent for a long while, humbled by this. He tried to remember just how lucky he was, that no matter what he saw or heard during the course of his day, he’d always had a hat stand to leave it at, a home that’s was a refuge._

 

He reminded himself, that day on Lake Silence, that he should never take such love for granted.

And then he had. He had pushed it too far. Lost in a single stroke of a pen all that they had worked to build.

The scrimping, the mending, the making meals from scratch, the making do so she could put a bit away. It was Win’s money as much as his. The paycheck came in his name, but any savings they had was down to her, the labour of her hands. Even down to those sandwiches, the ones she made every morning, so he’d not have to spend money at meals out at the pub.

 

"Thursday?" 

Thursday looked up. He was not sure how long he had been standing there, starting at a message on yellow note paper that his eyes were too tired to read.

 

“Sir,” Thursday said.

“Might I have a word. In my office?" CS Dawkins asked. 

Thursday nodded grimly. 

Once they were inside the spacious office, modern and white, with spider plants fighting for room in the window sill—an office so unlike Mr. Bright’s office with its round wooden table where one might hope for a congenial chat—Dawkins settled himself behind his desk and gestured to Thursday to take a seat.

“You do realize, that there’s likely to be a review. About what happened last night,” he said. "An officer down," he added, shaking his head, as if that would not do.

“I do,” Thursday said tersely. “Is that all?”

 

“Not quite,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you. Didn’t Fancy give you my message?”

Thursday wasn’t sure how to answer that without getting the lad into trouble. He felt he had gotten him into enough trouble to be going on with.

 

“Well, Fancy’s been in hos . . . “ he began, but Dawkins cut across him, heading straight to the chase. “It’s about Endeavour Morse,” Dawkins said.

 

“What about him?” Thursday said. By God, he was almost hoping Dawkins might say something to the effect of what Trewlove had said he had. His temper was always there, crackling just beneath the surface these days. All he needed was the excuse.

What did he have to lose anyway? It wasn’t as if he any longer had a family in need of support.

 

“I might have said something that he may have taken the wrong way. I found him, you see, asleep at Strange’s desk, and how does that look? The man’s the subject of some scandalous biography, and there he is, flat out asleep? That sort of eccentricity may have been acceptable at the dusty, dingy little Cowley CID, but here?" Dawkins said. “I should say not.”

 Thursday felt the his grip on the metal chair handles tighten.

"But our situation has changed,” Dawkins said.

"Has it?” Thursday asked.

“Don’t give me that, Thursday. You know bloody well what I mean. A shooting in front of that wretched boxing club was bad enough, but a shooting at some uppercrust gala? It's not on, Thursday. It bloody well won't do." 

"So what is it you're getting at then, sir?" Thursday asked.

Dawkins looked pained then and leaned back in his chair. 

“I’m saying . . . I’m asking, if you might be able to get Morse to come back.”

 

 ***********

Max got into the morgue early that morning, in order to prepare for the last two identifications. His hands went through the motions automatically, but his mind was full of Morse.

What was he doing now?

Max wasn’t quite sure which scenerio might be for the best—while he certainly hoped the fellow had recovered from the shock of last night, it might well be safer—for the time being at least—if he remained in his stupor. A recovered Morse would be an active Morse, a Morse who might be, even now, formulating plans, hashing out a strategy. And from what Max had seen last summer, Morse’s judgment was not always to be trusted when he was left to his own devices.

He had tried to put in a call to Thrusday, but he was out, it seemed, on inquiry. 

As soon as Max was finished, he intended to go over to Lake Silence, to talk to Morse about the note, if he could. He was sure that Morse has understood the note right away, that its message was painfully clear.

 _To_ _Endeavour_

********

Max was not at the front door long when it was torn open, with a force more vehement than he would have expected. He was surprised to see not a butler, but Bixby himself standing there in the foyer, looking impeccable as ever, even after a night as ghastly as the one they had just endured. 

“Good God, old man . . . ” Bixby began.

As he spoke, Max’s eyes were caught by a flurry of movement above, on the staircase. He glanced up to see the fleeing figure of Morse, dressed in faded jeans, his wild hair flying, bounding up the stairs almost two at a time.

 

So. He would take that as a sign that Morse wasn’t particularly anxious to talk about that letter.

 

“Where have you been all the morning?” Bixby was saying. “Christ, what a night. Endeavour’s been driving me mad.”

“Oh?” Max asked, trying to sound as if such a thing was surprising, when the _real_ wonder was that Morse was just now getting around to accomplishing that. Max would have thought that living with Morse might have driven the man to madness years ago. But it did seem that Bixby had rather a hard shell. 

“He’s got that ludicrous shirt on again too, which means it will take a steam shovel to get him out of the house,” Bixby said irritably. And then, crossing his arms, he asked. “And who in the hell is Karl Popper? Am I being insulted? That’s what I’d _really_ like to know.”

 

Insulted? Again, Max found himself astounded by the vanity of the man. A brutallly crafted death threat comes upon his house, and he’s concerned about whether or not someone is slighting his irreproachable person?

 

Although, it seemed quite possible that Morse had told him nothing about that note.

 

“Karl Popper?” ventured Max. “He’s a Viennese philosopher." 

Bixby looked mollified by this. “Ah,” he said.

“Why do you ask?” Max said.

Bixby just shook his head. “Endeavour was up half the night, every hour on the hour, roaming around down here with a fireplace poker. When I asked him what he was doing, he denied any such thing. ‘Go back to sleep and stop exaggerating, Karl Popper,’ he said.”

 

Ah. A fire place poker. That must be it.

 

“Well, Karl Popper did have a dispute with a philosopher called Wittgenstein that resulted in some debate about a fireplace . . . “ 

“Oh, no,” Bixby said, waving one hand in dismissal, as if Max had showed up on his doorstep to borrow an alarming amount of money. “Not Wittgenstein. I don’t need to hear another word.”

 

Just then the phone began to ring.

 

“Sorry, old man. I hate to be rude. But I’ve got to get that. Endeavour’s upstairs. If he’ll tell you what that note was about, I’ll be eternally in your debt.” And with that, Bixby turned on his heel and left him there, in the tall, open foyer.

“. . . I’m beginning to think Thursday was quite right,” he called, as he made his way down the hall. “He knows what the damn thing means. He’s a terrible liar.” And then he disappeared into a room.

And the sound of the ringing phone stopped.

 

Max blinked at the man’s sudden departure. So what then? Was he supposed to just go upstairs and flush Morse out, like a fox from the brush?

Incredible.

Max sighed and started up the stairs; leave it to Morse to make everything as awkward as possible. He felt like a damn fool.

 

At the top of the stairs, Max hesitated. It did seem an awful intrusion, just barging through the halls, looking in bedrooms for signs of Morse.

He turned right and headed down the end of one long hall, taking in the paintings along the walls as he went. Some of them were quite good, actually. He wondered idly if Morse had had a hand in this, or if Bixby’s tastes had matured, grown less garish, since the days he when he was best known for his wild parties.

At the end of a hall, Max came to a large and airy room painted a soft summer green, one with white sheer curtains and heavy dark furniture, including an enormous four poster bed, on which lay a half-open suitcase and some hastily strewn about clothes. 

There was even a sitting area with a dark green couch and chairs and its own rug before a fireplace. And, on the other side of the room—huddled amidst the cushions of the window seat—was Morse, still clutching the fireplace poker, his hair disheveled, so that some strands stood out like those of a dandelion clock, gold and translucent in the morning light.

Morse’s eyes widened, as if he was shocked Bixby would dare to send someone to invade his sanctuary.  

“Good morning, Ludwig,” Max said.

Morse scowled.

“If you’re going to disparage Bixby’s concerns, perhaps you should make allusions that he might understand," Max continued, undaunted. "You’ve got him utterly befuddled with this Karl Popper business." 

This did not go over well.  

“He’s not stupid,” Morse said sourly. “He’s been to Harvard. He’s got more of a degree than I’ve got, seeing as he’s done something with his.”

 

 So. Loyalty then. Sorry as Max was to have opened the conversation with such a salvo of negativity, he couldn’t say he wasn’t pleased to see it. Sometimes, when he remembered that open look of gratitude Morse had bestowed on the fellow on the night of Henry Winter’s suicide, Max couldn’t help but wonder if Morse had simply latched on to Bixby as a way out of the web in which it seemed he had gotten himself so thoroughly entangled. 

Any port in a storm.

 

Max walked slowly into the room. Morse remained where he was, looking wary.

He was Morse and not Morse. The Morse he remembered was invariably dressed in a cheap suit, stalking cat-like around the room. This Morse remained absolutely still, dressed in a manner in which he never had seen him. ‘ _That ludicrous shirt_ ,’ Bixby had said. And, sure enough, he was wearing a T-shirt with a blue cartoon dog in a beret on it, and a pair of old jeans, so worn that one knobby knee protruded through a tear in the fabric. 

The shirt seemed to mean something, from what Bixby had said. 

“Where did you get the shirt?” Max asked, hoping to get the conversation back on track, so that he could work his way to the subject of that note. 

“Esme gave it to me,” he said.

“Oh? Who’s Esme,” Max asked, settling down in a chair by the window seat.

Morse watched him closely as he sat. “A girl I used to tutor. She’s started at the Sorbonne now,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a joke. It’s me.”

Max raised his eyebrows and then laughed—the French cartoon dog _did_ have a singularly haughty expression, and did, in fact, look quite a bit like Morse.

If Morse were a cartoon dog.

 

Max nodded towards the open suitcase on the bed.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked.

“No,” Morse said. “Bix is.”

”Oh?” Max asked.

That seemed odd. The man certainly didn’t give the impression of someone  whose departure was imminent.

“Or, at least he would, if he had one shred of kindness in him,” Morse amended. Then, his face became as a set mask, as he looked stonily out of the window. “I think it’s awfully hard—don’t you?—If one person asks a second person a simple favor, such as going home to water one’s Christmas tree, and the second person won’t do it, even though that person has been going around behind the first person’s back, reopening casinos in London and getting involved in dealings with Jamaican mob bosses. Wouldn’t you say so?”

 

Max wasn’t sure whether he should worry about the state of Morse’s mind, that he should utter such a convoluted sentence, or about the state of his own as, miraculously, he had managed to follow it.

 

“Madame Lambert won’t water it, I know,” Morse added sadly. “It will be as dry as tinder, and then it will catch fire, and the whole place will burn to the ground.”

Morse looked utterly bereft, as if in telling this maudlin little tale, he was actually coming to believe in it.

 “Bixby doesn’t understand,” Morse said. “I _need_ that house. I know where everything is there.”

The words reminded Max again of his great aunt—and of his mother’s efforts to move her to a home. “But I know where everything is here, dear,” she would invariably say.

 

 

“I shouldn’t worry, Morse,” Max said. “If it’s just standing there. You didn’t leave any lights plugged in, I take it.”  

Morse appeared to think that over for a moment, and then his face lit up, as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Yes, now that you mentioned it. I think I did leave them on,” he said, leaping deftly out of the window seat. 

Bixby was right. If he had been a poor liar before, he was now a terrible one, as transparent as thin glass.

 

Max remained where he was, while Morse went out of the room. He didn’t think it would be a particularly long conversation.

 

He listened to Morse’s steps, moving briskly down the hall. “Bix!" he called.

His voice faded off, to be replaced by indiscernible voices. Max waited. It was becoming difficult to imagine how this visit could become any more awkward.

In a few minutes, Morse returned, looking sullen. Obviously, his plan had not worked. 

 

“Why don’t you just tell him?” Max said pointedly.

“I did tell him. Just now. He still won’t go.”

“No,” Max clarified. “I mean why don’t you just tell him about that note?”

Morse flinched.

“What about it?” he asked.

“That that’s why you want him to leave. You’re concerned about that note.”

Morse paused. “You know, then? What it says?" 

“Yes,” Max said quietly.

Morse’s entire expression twisted at that, and then, he seemed to sag, sinking back amongst the cushions of the window seat.  “I can’t tell Bixby something like that.”

Max huffed a laugh. “Why ever not?”

But Morse only shook his head, as if that was an option he did not care to consider. “He just . . . he won’t understand.”

“Well of course he won’t, if you won’t say.”

“I don’t _want_ him to have to understand.” Morse said testily.

 

“Well, then," Max said, "you’ll just have to think of a better ruse to pack him off to France than saying you’re worried about a ridiculous Christmas tree, won’t you?”

Morse’s eyes blazed for a moment at that, like blue-hot fire, and for a moment, Max was almost alarmed—considering Morse was still cradling that poker. But then he slumped back against the window, as if all the fight had gone out of him.

“Bixby doesn’t understand. That level of hate,” Morse said, his voice low. Then, musingly, he added,  “Who must hate me so much? How can someone hate me so much, and I not even know?”

“Why is this about you? It was Bixby the assailant was after, wasn’t it?”  Max asked. 

Morse frowned. “You saw that note. ' _To Endeav_. . . '" Then he stopped, as if he was unable to complete the words. “It was directed at me. Someone wanted to twist my heart out. Someone who knew I’d rather just be the one shot in the face and have done with it. Someone who wanted to make me suffer all the days of my life, thinking it was my fault that in the end he would have ...”

His voice had started to shake by the end, and, unable to finish the sentence, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass. It was odd: again, Max had the feeling that it was Morse and it was not Morse. Or had this been Morse all along, under that austere, marble exterior? Perhaps it was. ... perhaps he simply had lost that mechanism by which he had once held everything so restrained?

“I can't even imagine who it must be," he said. "Isn't that odd?" 

 

“Could it be someone with a score to settle, from your days in the police?” Max asked.

“No,” he said with a soft certainty.

Max was wondering how he could be so sure, when Morse said, “None of them would think me worth the bother. Criminals gossip worse than police, it seems. Even Luc and Antonio knew, all the way in France.”  

“Who knew what?” Max asked, perplexed.

Morse’s face twitched a bit, though his eyes remained closed. “Some art thieves I came across. In France.”

 

Good Lord. What sorts of things was Bixby up to? Was Morse quite sure he knew what he was doing with the man?

 

 “Somehow, they knew. That I used to sing. In prison.”

Max stilled at that. “Oh?” he asked, cautiously. 

“In the night. I used to sing opera. Just to drive them all mad. And they would yell and scream and I’d keep them up all night and they could not do one thing about it.”

Max frowned. It sounded like absolute bedlam. “What of the guards? Did they allow all that?”

“Why would they care?” Morse asked simply. “They were on the night shift. They had quiet beds waiting for them when they left. They were happy for us to just make their jobs all the easier, for us to torment one another.”

 

Max was not quite sure what to say. He was almost afraid to say anything at all.

“Anyone who might have something against me from when I was . . . when I was with the police . . . they’d know all about everything, most likely. Considering that even Luc and Antonio did. I think they would consider themselves revenged.” Morse took a deep breath and sighed. “This is all my fault,” he said. “That it’s reached this point.”

“How do you suppose that?”

“The day I came into the nick. There had been three murders over the past month, and then, on the day I arrived, there were two more and one attempted, all in the same day. It’s like someone knew.”

Morse sat up in the seat and then turned to him, adding, “It’s like someone knew I was there. What are the chances? A poisoning? A shoot-out and a car bomb, all in one day? Someone was trying to  . . . I don’t know. . . draw me in. I felt it then, but I didn’t want to believe it. So I didn’t. . .” He shrugged and leaned back against the window.

Max had no reply to that. It had been quite a busy day for him, too. The fact that it just so happened to correspond with Morse’s first day back in Oxford had not occurred to him at the time.

 

“Did you find out who that man was?” Morse asked.

Max looked at him for a moment, his brow furrowed.

“Did you identify the body?” Morse clarified.  

 

Ah. It was clear, then, just who Morse must mean. 

“Yes,” Max said softly.

 

“Do you think he would have been repulsed?” Morse asked.

Max frowned. “How do you mean?”

“You know. Having some bender, sobbing all over him.”

Max frowned all the deeper that. He didn’t care at all to hear Morse refer to himself with such a slur. And as for Charles Dodson, if he would be offended, he could go straight to hell, in Max’s opinion.

 

But Morse looked so forlorn, he couldn’t bring himself to say that.

 

From what he had gleaned from the family at the identification that morning, Charles Dodson seemed for all the world to be an utter cad. A gambler who sowed nothing but discord among his family, and a habitual philanderer who had brought nothing but heartache to his wife. It was highly probable that the man had been mourned over by Morse with more tenderness than he was likely to receive from anyone else.

“No,” Max said. “I think he was beyond caring.”

 

“That’s all down to me, too,” Morse said. “That entire, awful night. If I had been going into the nick, I would have known what they were up to, I would have known that something was not right.”

“How would you have known?”

“I would have just known,” Morse said simply. 

“Why weren’t you?” Max asked. “Going into the nick? You came all this way to consult, didn’t you? Seems a long way to travel—to come all the way to Oxford, and then not go down the the station.”

“Dawkins, I suppose,” Morse said simply.

Max raised his eyebrows in question.  

“He said. To Fancy. That he didn’t want someone _like that_. In the nick,” Morse explained, haltingly.

“What did he mean, ‘someone like that?’” Max asked. “A poet, do you mean?”

The corner of Morse's mouth twitched in a bit of a smile. “You know what he meant,” he said.

“People will talk Morse. I thought Jakes used to give a ribbing on that score, no?”

“He did. I didn’t care, then. Maybe because it wasn’t true, I suppose.”

 

What rot was this? If it was true, it was true, wasn’t it? Surely that was the sort of thing one knew by one’s late twenties? Max had known much earlier—he could not remember _not_ knowing, in fact. 

But then, Morse had always seemed to be so painfully disconnected from his own feelings, from his own body. How many times, after all, did Max find himself having to patch the fellow up? Morse treated his physical being as something to be tossed into the path of psychopaths and killers, without any apparent forethought.

In contrast, there was something remarkably sensual about Bixby—in everything from the smile that often played across his full mouth to the way he leaned back in a chair with easy grace. Perhaps it took someone like that— a complete hedonist, albeit male or female— to unlock whatever it was that was held within ascetic Morse?

 

It was then that Max realized Morse was looking steadily at him, as if he could read his thoughts. Max had to struggle not to look away.

“What should I do?” Morse asked. 

Max blinked owlishly behind his glasses. He did not expect to be asked that question so directly. 

“I can’t really win, one way or the other, can I?” Morse said. “If I do nothing, then how will the killer or killers ever be stopped? But if I engage, I’m playing their game, by their rules, aren’t I?” 

“I suppose.”

"So, what should I do?" Morse asked again. 

"I'm not sure, Morse, if that's down to me," Max said. 

Morse looked out of the window again, leaning his head on the pane, and said, simply, "I suppose I have to engage, then." 

Max said nothing. 

 

Morse took a deep breath and recited slowly, "Today I shall be strong, no more shall yield to wrong, shall squander life no more. Days lost I know not how, I shall retrieve them now. Now I shall keep the vow, I never kept before."

He paused for a moment, and then skipped to the end of the poem, saying with a shuddering breath, "How hopeless, underground falls the remorseful day." 

 

Morse got up then, out of the seat, and wandered over to the sitting area. He picked up a decanter of Scotch, poured a tumbler, and downed it in one go.

When he turned, he must have mistaken the startled look on Max’s face.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, picking up another glass and holding it up, as if by way of an offering. “Would you like one?”

“It’s barely past ten, Morse,” Max said pointedly.

Morse shrugged. “It’s all right. I won’t say anything.”

“No, thank you,” Max said.

Morse shrugged again and poured himself another, carrying it over to the bedside table. Then he came around toward were Max was sitting, and collapsed backwards onto the bed, leaving his legs bent at the knee, so that they were half hanging off the side. His shirt rode up as he fell, revealing a line of golden down shooting down from around his navel, and that white line of a scar, a reminder of a different Morse, the Morse he had known years ago. It was odd to think now, that there was a time his mouth would have gone dry at the sight of Morse sprawled thus.

 “What do you think of Plato?” Morse asked.  

“That’s rather a broad subject, Morse,” Max said. “What about him?”

“I mean, Platonic forms.”

Max huffed a laugh. “I don’t know, Morse. As a man of science, I suppose I’m more of an Aristotelean.”

Morse sat up and twisted around, opening a drawer on the far bedside table. He pulled out a fir cone, and then fell backwards onto the mattress once more, holding the fir cone up to the light, twirling it in his hand.

“I just don’t know what to think, sometimes," he said. "How can there be a perfect, ideal form of something? Perhaps such an idea might work for justice, or love, or the abstracts. But how can it work for something like a fir cone?”

“How do you mean?” Max asked.

“I mean, how can you decide what the perfect Platonic form of a fir cone should be? Should it be perfectly straight, or is it in the nature of fir cone to be slightly curled? It should carry a scent, but sometimes, they only do if they are slightly crushed.  if you have a collection of two or three fir cones, let's say, can you really determine if one is fulfilling its nature better than the other?”

“I haven’t given the matter much thought,” Max said.

“I have,” Morse said, heavily. Then he looked at him. "Why do you keep calling . . . ?" 

Just then the doorbell rang, and Morse leapt up off the bed and flew to the window. 

"Oh, no," he said. "It's Thursday."

 

 There was a silence and then a murmur of voices from downstairs. 

 

“I don’t want to get him involved in this,” Morse said.

Max looked at him sharply. “It’s his job to be involved, Morse. If you don’t want to tell Bixby, that’s your affair. But you must be forthcoming with Thursday. If you won’t, I will.”

“But he’ll take me off the case,” Morse said. “I'm involved in it now, aren't I? He'll take me off the case right when I resolved to get back on it.”

 

“Morse?” boomed a voice.

 

"Morse?" 

 

Morse remained still, standing in the window. Max wondered if he shouldn't answer the Inspector, but then the oddness again struck him, that they were conversing in Morse's bedroom. It seemed strange, somehow, to beckon another into the man's private space.

Although, he realized, he himself had waltzed right in, hadn't he? 

 

"Morse!" sounded the voice, more impatiently.

 

"What's Bixby up to?" Morse said waspishly.

"What do you mean?" Max asked. "That's Thursday calling, isn't it?" 

"What's he so busy doing, he doesn't have time to see to a guest? What's he up to? Why does he keep sending up all these people?” Morse snapped.

Max was just mulling over what he thought of being referred to as one of  _these people_ , when Thursday appeared in the door.

The Inspector nodded to Max. "Doctor," he said, by way of greeting. If he thought it was odd that he was there, having a tete-a-tete in the man's bedroom, he didn't say.

Then he turned to Morse, “What’s this Morse? Why the hell didn't you answer, come downstairs?  Bix says you've been driving him half barmy." 

Morse's face clouded over. “How’s Fancy?” he asked, pointedly changing the subject. 

“All right. They’re releasing him this afternoon. Trewlove went to see him this morning.”

“Hmmmmm, did she?” Morse asked, smiling gently.

 

Then, in an instance, the clouds seemed to shift, and he glowered as he landed back with a plop into the window seat.

“I noticed Strange showed up right in time last night. Right in time to be of absolutely no use.”

“Morse,” Thursday said, a trace of admonition in his voice.

But Morse was undaunted. “You know, it was he who convinced me to come here. He called, out of the blue. Said you were in hospital.”

“Yes,” Thursday said. “I was, that’s true.”

“You seem fine to me,” Morse said.

“Did me good, I suppose, having you here, to discuss, well, you know, that . . ." Thursday cast an uneasy glance at Max and let the sentence die. "And, it’s good to have you back in the nick. Well, when you were there, at any rate.”

“Not everyone thinks so,” said Morse gloomily.  

“I don’t think either one of us was ever going to achieve universal popularity, Morse,” Thursday said. “Mr. Dawkins spoke to me this morning. He wants you to come back. And go easy on Strange. He had a bit of a hurdle last night. Risked getting into some hot water last night, by bringing in what cavalry he could.”

“What do you mean?” asked Morse, snapping to attention at that. 

“Someone called Sgt. Decker, claiming to be from Division. Saying that if there was anything called in from the Moonlight Rooms, we weren’t to respond.”

 

Morse went white, his eyes bright; he looked almost feverish.

“What’s this? Who was it?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. You can leave that bit to me. In the meantime, if you want to be of use, you should get that brain of yours onto these red letters."  

“What do you mean _letters_?" Morse asked. "There was only one last night.”

“That’s right. You wouldn’t say what it meant. But it must have been meant for you, isn’t that right?”

“How do you know that?” Morse asked.

 

“Because all of your old pals have one now, too.”

“What _old pals_?” Morse asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“Bruce Belborough, Kay Belborough. Tony Chalbourne. Philippa Carey, and Susan Winter."

“What?” Morse gasped. “How can that be? They can’t possibly have anything to do with a turf war between Nero and Ames, can they?" 

"Belborough and Chalbourne had both been sounded out about that Poplar Hall business," Thursday ventured. "Ames wasn't happy they backed out of the deal." 

"All right," Morse conceded. "But Pippa? For what possible reason would anyone threaten her?" 

“That’s what I need you to help me figure out. Now come on. Everyone is on their way over to the Belboroughs'. Let’s go.”

Morse looked panicked. “No,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘no?’”  

“I can’t leave Bix here.”

“Well, bring him along. He’s in this, too.”

“Of course, he isn’t. He has nothing to do with this,” Morse said. “And besides," he added glumly. "I don’t want to have them in the same room together. Bixby and Susan.”

 

Susan. Max's mind swept back to the ruins of a party at a house on Lake Silence. She, then, from what he had seen in the papers afterward, must have been Morse's former financé.

 

Thursday huffed a rueful laugh. “No, I would bet you don't. But we're going, all the same."

Then Thursday's narrow gaze swung to Max. "Do you happen to have the letter, doctor? The one I gave you last night? We might as well bring it along. Sort it all out with the others.”

“Of course, Inspector,” Max said, reaching within his inner coat pocket.

 

It happened so fast that Max didn’t see it coming: Morse leapt up off of the seat and snatched the note from his hand, balling it up and moving it toward his face as if he planned to swallow the thing.

Thursday grabbed it away before he could cram it into his mouth. Morse shouted in protest and Thursday snarled, “Goddamn it, Morse, what the . . . “

 

“Endeavour?”

Bixby was there, standing in the doorway, looking thoroughly bemused.

Thursday quickly took the note and straightened, his lined face once more impassive. Morse hid the fir cone he still held in his other hand behind his left leg, as if it were some contraband item.

“What do you have there?” Bixby asked.

“Nothing,” Morse said.

Bixby laughed warmly. “Well, what are you all doing up here? Why don’t you bring your guests downstairs, Endeavour? You had better hope Jerome Hogg doesn’t catch wind of this, you bringing all of these people up to our room. He might turn this into quite the story.”

Thursday’s face darkened. “A little less of that, if you don’t mind.”

But Bixby's eyes were trained fully on Morse.  “What’s going on? Why do you look so upset?” 

Morse made a face as if he hadn't the slightest idea where to begin. “Why _shouldn’t_ I be upset?” Morse said. “For starters, someone tried to kill you last night.”

Bixby frowned. "No one tried to kill me,” he said. “Someone tried to kill Charles Dodson. And succeeded. The fact that you mistook him for me was really just a . . . “

But Morse had gone still at that. “You mean you _know_ him?”

“Well, I _knew_ him. I’ve done business with everyone in Oxford at some point. Is that what this is all about?" Bixby asked, with the same bemused smile. "Why you've been on patrol with a fireplace poker?”

“Yes,” Morse said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? The assailant must have been given a photograph of you, must have meant to target you, but as you weren’t there, he made a mistake, and went for the person who looked the most like you."

 

Bixby raised his eyebrows at that. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I look nothing whatsoever like Charles Dodson. The man had a nose that you wouldn’t believe . . . “

“Bix,” Morse said, as if to let him know he was in no mood for a joke.

“. . . and he had a full beard, so . . . ”

Morse and Thursday paused at that, exchanging a barrage of meaningful looks in the span of just a few seconds.

 

“His hair _is_  quite a bit like mine," Bixby conceded. "But, honestly,” he said, drawing hinself up to his full height, “I ought to be offended. I think I am rather more fit, wouldn’t you...”

“Don’t!” Morse said, covering his face in his free hand. “He had one of your gold chips in his pocket!”

Bixby shrugged. “A lot of people have those. Anyone who has been to the Belvedere.”

“I didn’t even know you had reopened the place,”  Morse said.

Bixby flicked a glance toward Thursday and Max. “It might easily have escaped your notice. You were rather busy last fall."

“Not as busy as you were, evidently,” Morse said, tartly. 

 

“Charles Dodson had a hundred enemies," Bixby said simply. "Owed money to everyone. Owed money to me, come to think of it. He's a far more likely target than I am. It was just rotten luck he’d wear a nice suit that night. A ghastly coincidence," Bixby said. 

“Then why was the note in his pocket?” Morse asked. 

“I don’t know. I have no earthly idea as to what was in that note, and, therefore, I’m powerless to conjecture on that score," Bixby said, nonchalantly adjusting the cufflink on his sleeve. "Which is just how you want it, I presume."

"Yes,” Morse said, sullenly. “I do want. This is police business. You should go back downstairs.”

“Ah. Sorry. I didn’t realize you had opened a precinct of Thames Valley in our bedroom. Besides, I might be of some ...”

“I very much doubt it,” Morse interrupted.

Instead of taking offense at Morse's rudeness, Bixby laughed. "Oh, ye of little faith," Bixby said."From the way you speak, one wonders how I’ve managed to keep alive all of these years. Well. I'm certainly not frightened by some ugly, overly baroque threats. And I’m certainly not going to be chased all the way to France.”

 

Max had wondered how two such extreme but disparate personalities could manage to coexist. Was this the secret then? They each of them seemed convinced that he was the one ultimately in charge, that the other couldn’t possibly navigate the currents of the world without him. 

 

Morse looked mutinous. “You _should_ be frightened. You saw what happened last night.”

“If you are convinced this note was somehow directed toward me or toward you, perhaps that’s why the culprit went for the face," Bixby said. "Exit Dodson, and give you a good startle at the same time. A sort of two for one deal, as it were."

“A _startle_!” Morse wailed. "That's an understatement, surely." 

 

“Well then, Thursday said. “Perhaps we had better take a closer look at Dodson, then." 

"It was meant to be Bixby," Morse said hollowly.

"Not necessarily, if the man had a full beard, Morse," Thursday said. "He's worth a look, at any rate. Now let’s go."

 

"Where are you going?" Bixby asked. 

"To Bruce's” Morse said. “They all got them. Red letters." 

Bixby's dark eyes widened. "Well, I suppose I should come along, too, then." 

“No," Morse said. "Just stay here and don’t let anyone in until I’m back.”

Bixby looked at Thursday uncertainly. “But I think I should come. I was trying to find out a bit more about it before I told you, but, I . . .  .  Well, I was just going through the post this morning, and, it seems, I’ve got one, too.”

Bixby removed a letter on red paper from his inner coat pocket. Morse let out a strangled cry and dove for the letter in Bixby’s hand, but Thursday reached him first.

“I’ll just take this for safekeeping, shall I?” Thursday said. “Now, enough of this. Let’s go.”

Morse looked as if he were on the point of implosion. "All right," he said. 

"Aren’t you going to change?" Bixby asked.

“No," Morse said. 

Bixby sighed, but the corner of his mouth twitched a bit. Then he turned to leave.  Thursday followed. Morse watched them go, and then threw himself across the bed, sliding open the drawer opposite, and depositing the fir cone inside. 

Then he scrambled up off of the bed.

“I suppose there’s no turning back now is there?" 

“No,” Max said.

"But to go forward, I have to go back. And Orpheus was told he shouldn't look back."

He went over to the bedside table and downed the second glass of Scotch. “I don’t know how I’ll navigate this. And to think, just a week or so ago, I was happy just to have made it home from Paris without getting lost.”

He put the glass down, and then he was out the door.

******

They were heading out to the cars out front, when Morse asked, “Would you do me one favor?”

“What’s that?” Thursday asked.

“Do you think you might all just, I don’t know, choose a name and stick with it?”

“How do you mean?” Bixby asked. 

“Well,” Morse said miserably. “You’ll be calling me Endeavour, Thursday will be calling me Morse, and they all will be calling me Pagan. It’s confusing, actually.”

Bixby and Thursday exchanged looks. “Well, which would you prefer then, for the proceedings, such as they are?" Bixby said. 

“Well, not _Pagan_ ," Morse said. He turned to Thursday. “In what capacity am I going there? Am I going as your consultant, or because of the attack last night, and this business Bixby has gotten involved in, or as one of my old set, since we’ve all had letters?" 

"All three, I suppose," Thursday said. He hesitated. "I know it's a bit of a conflict of interest, lad. But since this business over at Lonsdale has led us to conclude that a don might be in on the thing, I'm not quite sure who to call, who to trust." 

"Never mind, then," Morse said. “It doesn’t matter, really.”

“I’ll see you at three o’clock then, for the autopsies, doctor?” Thursday asked as they headed for the car.

“That’s right, Inspector."

Max stood by the side of his Morris and watched them go.

 

What is the perfect Platonic form of a fir cone?

Or what is the perfect Platonic form of Thursday’s erstwhile bagman?

Is it Morse, Pagan or Endeavour?

 ***************************

“It’s all rubbish,” Susan said hotly. “None of it means anything.”

Thursday sat alone on a small couch, taking note of the group gathered in the drawing room before him. They sat assembled in couches and chairs in the Belbouroughs' plush drawing room, painted a deep blue and covered almost floor to ceiling in paintings. They all of them held red letters in their hands and books on their laps--they were all able, it seemed, to find the sources of their letters quickly enough, but none of them seemed to have Morse's uncanny photographic memory. 

He remembered once, long ago, coming across a photo album at Bunny Corcoran’s flat—seeing the self-assured young undergrads, wealthy and brimful of certainty in their destiny—in photo after photo, sprawled on picnic blankets, posed on staircases, or standing at the edge of a lake. He couldn't help but wonder at the time how it was that an awkward Morse, a cabbie’s son from Lincolnshire, might fit in with this set.

Now, seeing them for the first time assembled in one room, it was clear.

They all had a certain poise, be it arrogance or elegance, a certain way of radiating the fact that, somehow, they were quite sure they were above the fray.  

Slumped down in his chair, in his sloppy clothes, Morse was practically vibrating with haughty impatience. As if he couldn’t possibly imagine how he had ended up in the same room as such people. As if somewhere, there were fir cones in urgent need of collecting.

Thursday was visited by the desire to march over, grab him firmly by the shoulders, and make him sit up straight.

 

“It’s not the lines that mean anything,” Morse said. “It’s the lines after.”

 

There was a pause.

 

Then, a unison of groans and outcries of surprise.

 

“I call that just cruel,” Kay said, looking at her note. 

 

“ _And_ _wilt_ _though_ _leave_ _me_ _thus_?” Bruce said aloud, wonderingly to himself. He turned to Kay. “Are you leaving me?”

“What?” asked Kay.

 “If she were going to leave you, she would have done so years ago,” Chalbourne said.

“Shut up, Tony,” Bruce said. “No one was talking to you.”

“Yes, keep out of it, Tony,” Kay said.

 

“All right,” Thursday barked. “Let’s just take this one at a time. Miss Carey?”

 

Pippa Carey was looking pale, her brown eyes shining with unshed tears. He had meant to spare her, by allowing her to go first, but instead, she flinched almost with shock.

Pippa read, “ _And with abiding speed well ye may_.” Then she looked up, and said dully, “ _Thus do I abide, I wot, always, neither obtaining nor yet denied. Ay me! This long abiding seemeth to me, as who sayeth, a prolonging of a dying death, a refusing of a desired thing.”_

 

“Goodness, that’s spicy,” Tony said. “Pining away for someone are you, my dear?”

Pippa Carey’s elegant face became as a mask at Chalbourne’s words. She stood up from her chair, stiffly, as if she were a piece of paper unfolding, and walked out to the hall.

They all seemed to go still as rabbits until Pippa left the room. Then Susan Winter rounded on Chalbourne. “Oh, well done, Tony,” she said.

“What?” Tony asked, looking dismayed at finding himself before a firing squad of dark looks. 

“Why would you say that to her?” Kay asked.

Morse was staring at him, his wide blue eyes affronted, and even Bruce Belborough, hardly a paragon of sensitivity, frowned his disapproval.

”What is it?” Chalbourne asked, gesturing helplessly.

From across the room, Bixby—suddenly his kindred spirit as an outsider— simply met his eyes and then widened them, as if to say: Well, two guesses as to whom she must be waiting for, then.

 

But what did a case of long unrequited love have to do with a turf war between Nero and Ames?

 

Susan, her face still full of thunder, reached over and snatched Chalbourne’s letter from his hand.

“Let's see what you've got, then," she said. Chalbourne tried to protest, but Susan was too quick for him. "Written round her neck in letters plain," she began . . . "What's this? . . . _Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am?_ ” she shouted, outraged. “What does that say about me?”

“Well, what does that say about me?” Chalbourne said.

“Well, what does that say about _me?”_ Morse said hotly.

 

Thursday wasn’t sure what it said about any of them.

 

“Well, I’m blasted twice then. Look what the hell I’ve got,” Susan said. _"But let it pass, and think of it as kind, that often change doth please a woman's mind."_

 

“Well Susan, they’ve a point there,” said Belborough. "Three engagements in the course of three years?"

"Two of them were to the same person. It’s very unfair, I'd say. Henry's mother and mine had declared our betrothal almost from birth. Its it so terrible that I should want someone else?  Just for once? It's not exactly as if I had scores of lovers. Unlike _some_ people I could mention in this room." 

Belborough scowled.

Bixby perhaps looked too comfortable there, sitting back in his chair, while they tore about at one another, for Susan rounded on him next. "And what about you? Sitting there, up in the clouds, judging us. What did you get?" 

Bixby shrugged nonchalantly, and held up his paper and read. _"’And you promised me to be as true as I would be. Which isn’t true.’_ Whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.”

 

“ _And so I see your double heart,_ ” Susan completed. Simple enough. Matches your double life.”

“Double life? What’s this?” Thursday asked.

“Oh, not this rot again,” Morse said. He turned to Thursday.  “It’s some ‘theory’ they have," he explained, making quotation marks with his fingers at the word _theory_. "Just because his family never happened to dine with theirs, they think he's some sort of imposter. That’s just typical uppercrust arrogance. They think they know everyone in Oxford."

Belborough looked at him with bored contempt. “That’s because we _do_ know everyone in Oxford, Pagan.”

“He’s an utter fraud, Devvy.  What a hypocrite you are," Susan said. 

“Oh, give it a rest Susan,” Tony said. “I didn't notice you around when all hell was breaking loose that summer. Bunny and Henry at one another's throats around the clock and Pagan  . . . " he faltered there, under a glare from Morse, but Kay picked up the gauntlet. 

“That’s right,” Kay said. “If you feel this way about it, why didn’t you try to stop him?”  

Susan leapt up, outraged. “I _did_ try to stop him. At gun point, I tried to stop him. And look what I got for it!" Her eyes were blazing with anger. 

 

 "Oh, no," Morse said, his voice low, and Susan’s eyes snapped toward him.

 

Thursday had wondered how the two had ever been engaged, but then he saw it, in the instant the two addressed one another directly. There was an odd intensity there; suddenly, it was as if no one else was in the room. Even Bixby, who usually dominated whatever circle he was in, seemed momentarily eclipsed.

 

“You’re not laying that at my feet,” Morse said. “I didn’t ask for any of _that.”_

”What do you mean, _that_? Henry _that?_ ” she asked. 

“I didn’t ask for Henry to die for me,” Morse said.

“Well, nor did I!” Susan said.  “Was I sorry for . . . ” her eyes trailed to Thursday and she stammered.  . .  “for, for, what happened years ago? Yes, of course. But there was nothing I could do to change the past. It was all best left, buried, undisturbed, at the bottom of the lake. It was _you_ , you had to stir it all up again, muddy the waters, set everything in turmoil, like you always do." 

"I think Henry rather did that, when he killed Bunny, wouldn't you say?" Morse said quietly. 

"That was all down to _him_ ,” Susan said, with a jerk of her head toward Bixby. "All that debt Bunny owed, at cards. All those parties. Nothing good happens after three in the morning, as they say. And in our case, I'd say that's especially so. Wouldn’t you agree?”

She laughed then, a laugh without mirth. “‘ _You_ _ruined_ _my_ _life_ ,’” she said sadly. “That’s one of the last things I ever said to him.”

The others seemed to grow solemn, go quiet at that.

 

"That's not Bix’s fault,” Morse said, finally. “Bixby told Bunny to forget the money. It's not Bixby's fault you people are so proud that he went to Hen. . . "

 “I don’t know why you’re helping keep up all this pretense,” Susan snapped. “I heard he kicked you out last fall. I heard about you, you know, vagabounding around in Scotland.”

“I was on a writing holiday,” Morse said, crisply.

“Oh really? Julia Havens told me she saw you at a train station, looking like you hadn't combed out your hair for a month, pulling an apple out of a goddamned rubbish bin, like some sort of rough sleeper. I was _this_ _close_ to putting out a missing persons report on you,” she said, holding her thumb and index finger an inch apart.

 

“What’s this?” Bixby asked, sharply.

“Nothing,” Morse said.

“Were you really eating out of a rubbish bin?” Bixby said. “What the hell is the point of . . .

 

Christ, they were even getting Bixby into it now . . . 

 

“Well, if Julia Havens thought I was in such distress,” Morse said, cutting across him, “it might have been kinder for her to have said hello, rather than to spread more vicious rumors about me. Perhaps she ought to get together with Jerome.”

 

"Did anyone bother to notice that these poems are all by Sir Thomas Wyatt?” said a voice from the doorway. It was Pippa Carey, looking again composed, her arms folded.

”Yes,” Kay said ruefully. “A matching set, then?” 

 

 _“And my delight is causer of this strife,_ ” Morse said. “There’s a line of Wyatt I’d say suits.”

 

They all stopped and looked at him. 

Belborough was looking oddly shrewd. “It’s as if someone threw a grenade in here. It’s as if someone knew just what buttons to push.”

"It must be someone who knows us," Chalboune said. "My God. It must be someone we know."

Kay huffed a laugh. "It certainly doesn't. Anyone who has read that book might know these things. It’s all in there."

“You must be joking," Chalbourne said. 

"Who would hate us so much to do this?" Susan asked. 

“Anyone who read that book would hate us. I hate us, reading that thing,” Kay said.

“But you hate us anyway, don’t, you Kay?” Susan said.  

Kay narrowed her eyes.  

"Whoever it is, he certainly has us all at once another’s throats," Chalbourne said. 

 

Thursday sat back, watching their thought processes unfold. These notes were obviously of a personal nature. It seemed likely that, when left to work it out, they themselves might best trace them back to their source. 

 

“It’s Jerome.” Belborough said with dreadful certainty.

“But why?” Morse asked. “He’s already gotten what he wants out of us, surely?”

“He could get a bit more, though, couldn’t he?” Belborough asked.

“If he could push us to implosion. If he had a second book,” Morse nodded.  “And he knows, too. He knows about these red papers. Because he got one himself.”

 

“Morse!” Thursday boomed. 

 

Morse flicked his eyes over uncertainly, as if he was confused. “I’m not M. . .  a consultant here, am I?”

“I’ve already heard about that, anyway,” Chalbourne said. “It’s hardly a police secret, if that’s what you’ve been hoping. If it happens to Jerome, it’s common knowledge immediately. The man gossips about himself even more than he does about others. A dramatic brush with death? He was spreading the news far and wide.”

“This is just pathetic,” Susan said. “Look at us. A few letters and we’re right back in circles. Right back replaying the past."

"It is," Morse said. “It’s all circles.”

 

"What did yours say?" Susan asked. 

Morse flinched.

Thursday leaned forward in is seat, "Yes, what did yours say, Morse?," he said, unfolding the paper from his pocket. " _Seneca_ _and_ _Plato_ _call_ _me_ _from_ _thy_ _lore_ , _To_ _perfect_ _wealth . . . :_ "

"Sir," Morse shouted, suddenly jumping to his feet and striding across the room. 

 

“To Endeavour," Pippa said. 

Susan's eyes flashed up. "As in ' _To_ _Endeavour_?'"  she asked. 

  
"You mean that was in Dodson's pocket?" Belborough asked. "With his face blown away, I thought it could pass for . . . well, for Bixby." 

They room grew quiet. Bixby’s bemused face grew solemn. He tried to catch Morse’s eye, as if to confirm this, but Morse looked away. 

"That’s a completely different tenor, isn't it?" Susan asked. "These others are all childish rubbish, but one in the pocket of a man who had . . . " 

For a long moment, Susan and Morse's gazes were locked, as if they were hurdling toward the same conclusion.

 

 "Can I see them? The letters?" Morse asked.

Thursday hesitated. 

"I’m not going to....," Morse said. "I just want to look at them. The one in Dodson's pocket and the others." 

"All right, then," Thursday grunted, handing the one he held over.

Morse then gathered the rest and sat down, spreading them across his lap, his long fingers tracing carefully over the words. 

 

Then, he said, “The r's are leaping." 

"What?" Bixby asked. 

"The r's. On the letters. They leap a bit, compared to the letter found in Dodson's pocket. They were written on a different typewriter. They’re hoaxes." 

"What's this?" Thursday snapped. 

 

Morse looked up, a dazed look on his face.

"This set was written by someone else," Morse said, wonderingly. His eyes traced along the circumference of the room. "Maybe by Jerome. Maybe by one of us."

There was a general cry of outrage at that. 

"Pagan," Tony said chidingly. "Don't be . . . You don't mean that." 

"It was one of us the last time," Morse said.

And then his eyes fell on a large, ornate carriage clock on the mantlepiece, and he slowly rose to his feet.  

"Three hands moving," he said, "at different rates, yet they are hinged at the center. It’s Plato, it’s the tripartite soul. Ames at the heart, the man who called Sgt. Decker, and the man behind the red letters. And if they know one another . . . they met . . . how? And . . . ”

”Endeavour, why don’t you sit down.”

”Pagan?”

”No, it’s not me," Morse said, peevishly. "It’s the . . . I have to go," he said. 

“Morse!” Thursday bellowed.

But it was as if Morse didn't hear him, because he turned on his heel, and, in a moment, was heading out the door, with the same stride that once sent a cheap gray car coat swinging out behind him. 

 


	8. Chapter 8

“Endeavour!” called a voice, distantly, somewhere from behind him.

And Endeavour came to a sudden stop at the door  ... and how could he have forgotten...

“Where are you going?” Bixby asked.

“I have to go,” Endeavour said. He was Orpheus, and he had been walking amidst the shadows of the underworld, amidst the memories of things past.

But it wasn’t in looking back, that he’d find the answers.

It was in looking to the center.

A center just like the hinge of the hands of Bruce and Kay’s carriage clock.

 

“Now hold on just a minute, Morse,” Thursday said, striding up through the hall so that he came to stand alongside Bix. “We don’t need you shooting off on a tangent in the middle of everything else.”

“I’m not shooting off on a tangent. It’s not a line.  It’s a circle,” Endeavour said. “Or, the center of a circle, actually.”

“What’s this?” Thursday asked. “What’s this new angle you’ve got, then?”  

 

Endeavour sighed. Didn’t he just say it was a circle? That it had nothing to do with angles? And besides . . .

 

“I don’t want to say,” Endeavour said. “It might be better for you if you don’t know.”

 

“Oh,” Thursday said. “Well there’s a comfort.”

“I’m not going anywhere where there would be any danger,” Endeavour clarified. “I’m just going to talk to some . . . to some old friends, and that’s all. You know all of them, even. I just want to talk to them first, and then, I’ll come straight to the station, let you know if I’ve uncovered anything worth pursuing.”

Thursday looked at him assessingly, his dark eyes narrowed.

“Really, that’s all,” Morse said. “It might be nothing. If I find anything substantive, I’ll tell you straight off.”      

Thursday nodded. “Agreed, then,” he said. “I’ve got to meet Dr. DeBryn at three o’clock. I’ll be looking for you round the station at four. If you’re not there, I’ll come looking, mind.”

“All right,” Endeavour said.

“And I’ll be wanting to keep those,” Thursday said, gesturing to the red papers he still clutched in his hand.

“Oh,” he said, “sorry.”

 

So, Thursday was giving him the freedom to pursue inquiries as he saw fit, just as he once had a lifetime ago. It was more than Endeavour had dared to hope for.

 

That only left the problem of Bixby.

 

What would Endeavour do, how could he think in lines, not circles, if he knew Bixby was home by himself, ready to open the door to anyone who might happen to call?

How could he leave Bixby, for whom every chime of the doorbell signified the chance for some ripe new opportunity, rather than a cause for alarm?

There was nothing else for it, then.

 

“Would you come with me?” Endeavour asked, turning to him.

Bixby looked surprised, even a little gratified.

“Of course,” Bixby said. “If you think I might be of some help.”

“Uh . . . yes,” Endeavour stammered.

 

It wasn’t completely untrue: it would be a help, knowing he wasn’t home, throwing the front door open to pop bands and gangsters.

Bixby cast him a suspicious glance, as if he suspected he might be being handled, but then, he shrugged it off. “So, are we going home to get the car first? We rode over with Thursday, remember?” he asked.

“I can drop you on my way back,” Thursday said. “Let me just get things settled with this lot, and I’ll be right out.” He hesitated. “Do you want to come back in? Take your leave a little less . . . . abruptly?”

“No,” Endeavour said.

But then Bixby raised an eyebrow.

Endeavour could scarcely repress a snort. As if _now_ was the time to worry about good manners.

What a strange world, it was, Bixby lived in.

 “All right,” Endeavour said. And then, he added, “Actually, yes. There’s something I need to ask Bruce, before we go.”

“Bruce?” Bixby asked in wonderment.

**********

“You were waiting for a good long while at the club last night,” Endeavour said. “Did you see who else was killed? Other than Dodson?”

“Oy!” Thursday said. “Are you already back onto that? It’s finding the source of those red letters that I’ve set you on.”

“It’s important,” Endeavour said. “It means something. Were the people who were killed, in fact, targeted? Or were the deaths random, just the result of being caught in the crossfire? Because if it’s the latter, really, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“What difference does it make?” Bruce asked, dryly. “They’re dead now all the same.”

Endeavour struggled to maintain his composure. Bruce could be awfully dim.

“If Ames was angry with the people who had backed out of the Poplar Hall deal, that’s one thing,” Endeavour explained. “But this party, you said, was for people who were perhaps interested in investing. For Ames to order his men to go in and simply shoot up the place . . . wouldn’t that be counterproductive? Wouldn’t it stop anyone from wanting to do business with him ever again?”

“Well,” Bixby said nonchalantly. “Most probably. But not necessarily.”

 

Endeavour would have thought his reasoning to be clear; he certainly would not have thought Bixby of all people would disagree with him so blithely.

“What are you saying? Of course, it would!” Endeavour snapped.

“You’re not a gambler. Avarice can be a stronger force than fear. They’ll always be someone else in line, ready to take a chance, for the right price,” Bixby said.

Then he added, “It might well make them think twice, though, about backing out, once they’re in.”

Bruce laughed ruefully but appreciatively at that, and Endeavour spun on his heel at the sound. It was impossible that there might be something on which Bruce and Bixby might agree.

Endeavour felt as if the ground beneath him had turned to sand. There was something worrying, there.

 “How can you say that. Is that what you really think?” he asked.

Bixby looked slightly uncertain, and merely shrugged. “You don’t get far, always playing it safe.”

“Why are you looking so surprised? It’s like they all told you,” Susan said. “He’s a bloody chancer.”  

 

Endeavour, though, felt sure he was right. Of course, the people must have been targeted. How else, for one, to explain Fancy’s survival?

 

“I still want to know,” he said, turning to Bruce. “Did you? Did you see who it was?”

Bruce nodded grimly. “Yes. Charles Dodson, for one. Ian Summerland. Duncan MacPhereson. And . . . I don’t know the fourth person.”

“It was a waiter,” I believe,” Thursday said.

“Did it seem as if he was targeted, as Dodson was? The waiter? Or was he merely caught in the crossfire?” Endeavour asked.

“I don’t know, do I?” Thursday asked. “That’s why I’m meeting Dr. DeBryn at three.”

“Will you tell me, when you find out?”

Thursday looked like he was struggling with himself for a moment. Why? Why did it seem he was always waffling, where he was concerned?  Come to the station, but not to the boxing club. I’ll tell you about the letters, but not about the undercover. Inquire about the messages, but not about the shootings....

It made no sense. Unless . . .

 _Hat_ _stand_ , _Morse_.

Ah.

Thursday couldn’t make up his mind then, which side of the hat stand he should be on. About whether or not he still had faith in him.

 

Thursday looked at him a long moment, before he snatched his hat from up off a mahogany table and said, “All right, then. If you think it relevant. Now. Mind how you go.”

*************

Once they were back at the house, Endeavour went upstairs to change into a dress shirt and tie and to retrieve his notebook. He stopped before the mirror to flatten his hair down and tuck it back. He stared for a while at his reflection, trying to look stern, more serious, more self-assured. It was not a complete success, but he did look much more the part.

One person he wanted to talk to would still be at Bruce and Kay’s; one he was sure he could find at her office.

But the first person he planned to visit might only be home on the off chance—and first, he would need to look up his address in the phone book.

He only hoped Mr. Bright would recognize him after all of this time.

********************

On the drive to the other side of Oxford, Endeavour sat quietly, his sunglasses down over his face.

 

“Was that really the message in the last note, then? The one in Dodson’s pocket?” Bixby asked, after a long silence. “ _To_ _Endeavour_?”

“Yes,” Endeavour said. 

Bixby looked troubled. Endeavour wasn’t sure what else to say, because he wasn’t sure what to think. There was a lot he would have given, for Bix never to have heard about that.

 

Was Dodson singled out because he was Dodson? Or was he singled out because he looked enough like Bixby to stand in for him—thus explaining the note, the point-blank shot to the face?

Or some combination of the two, as Bixby had said? Kill Dodson and send him a message at the same time?

Was all of this, possibly, a game designed soley for him?

Because there was also that other message, the message no one else had asked about, the one that sent him racing to the club last night. 

 

  _And the archers shot at the king Josiah, and he said unto his servants to bring him away. So, his servants put him into the second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. And he died and was buried in the sepulcher, and all of Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah._

 

Bixby, in the meantime, was watching the road, an uncharacteristically solemn look on his face.

“That was a bit unlike you, wasn’t it?” he said, finally.

Endeavour frowned. That was a perplexing question. He wasn’t sure he knew what was like him and what wasn’t like him anymore.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The way you lied to Thursday. What Susan said is true, you do know that, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes. I didn’t lie. You are from Oxford,” Endeavour said.

Bixby smiled ruefully. “You know that’s so and it isn’t. I don’t know. I just wish I hadn’t told you. Now you have to lie for me, too.”

“Of course, you should have told me,” Endeavour said, turning slightly in his seat. “You should have told me long ago.”

“It’s just. . . you didn’t seem like yourself. I hate to think I’m turning you into me.”

“I would have thought you would have wanted me to be,” Endeavour said. “You’re one of the only honest people I know.”

Bixby laughed. “I would love to hear the convoluted logic behind that. As long as it has nothing to do with Wittgenstein, that is. Or Plato. Or Plotinus.”

Endeavour snorted. “Bruce doesn’t know _every_ person in Oxford. You heard them all in there. The lies are all so thick, you can barely climb out into the light. They are all lying to themselves, that’s the worst part.”

Then he turned to look out the window.

“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s not our fault. Perhaps we grew up together in too much of a hothouse. We had all our tutorials together, with Julian Morrow. It sort of . . . cut us off from the rest of the college,” he mused. “I suppose that’s why I saw vines.”

“You saw _vines?_ ” Bixby asked, looking slightly alarmed.

“Not at Bruce and Kay’s,” Endeavour said, annoyed at the implication. “At the bacchanal. I saw vines growing around my ankles, felt them. And I couldn’t break free.”

 

A crease had formed between Bixby’s eyes. He never liked that sort of talk; he seemed to think that Endeavour didn’t know the difference, didn’t know what was real and what was an illusion, what was smoke and mirrors. 

 

Endeavour was quiet again for a moment, watching the bare branches flash by through the window glass, his own reflection transposed, ghost-like, against the winter trees.  

 

“I feel awful that we ganged up on Tony. It’s incredible to realize that, after all these years, he had no idea. But I can’t fault him, really. I’m no better. I wouldn’t have gotten one of the letters about me until just a few days ago. It would have gone clear over my head. And then of course, Henry always had to muddy the waters on that score.”

“What do you mean?” Bixby said, a bit sharply.

But Endeavour didn’t want to think about Henry. He was thinking about Pippa. How he hadn’t seen her since that party, when they found out she had been right that morning, that morning now so long ago.

 

“I’m the worst of the lot,” Endeavour said, miserably.

Bixby looked at him with bracing smile. “That’s rubbish,” he said. “You’re a straight bat, old man. I knew it the first time I saw you.”

 

Endeavour could only shake his head. He felt like nothing at all like a straight bat.

 

Whatever the hell that was. 

Must be something to do with that American sport. Baseball.

 

“So, what are we doing here, exactly?” Bixby asked, taking a sweeping turn along a curve that cut through the trees.

“It’s a thought I had. When I was looking at the carriage clock at Bruce and Kay’s. Three hands moving at different speeds. The movements of the hands might seem quite illogical, quite random.  But at the center, they are hinged together. So that’s what we have to find. The center. The point of origin.”  

 

“How do you mean?” Bixby asked.

“First off, there’s Ames, keen to make his mark. And how best to say one has arrived, in Britain? What makes one a member of the upper echelon? Land. Just as in the message in the red letter: _I_ _dreamed_ _of_ _every_ _possible_ _landscape_. You can see the drive in his two most visible enterprises—in both his turf war with Nero, and with this development venture, Poplar Hall. Town and gown. He wants to own both sides of Oxford. Literally and figuratively.  

“Then, the second hand our clock: the writer of these red letters. He adds a flair to the proceedings that our newcomer, Ames, appreciates. Considering the two sudden deaths at Lonsdale, he might just well be a don.  He provides Ames with customers for his drug trade and then takes a cut in return.”

“Then,” Endeavour continued, “there’s the third hand: According to Thursday, when Jim Strange tried to get some officers over to the Moonlight Rooms last night, DS Decker told him that if anything was called in from over there, they were not to respond.”

 

Endeavour paused and sighed. “They had no way of knowing Fancy would run into the place. I really wish we had time to stop by and ask him just what exactly he thought he was doing.”

Bixby huffed a rueful laugh. “It sounds just like the sort of thing you used to do.”

“Me?” Endeavour asked, appalled. “Whoever said such a thing?”

“Thursday.”

“When? When did he say this?”

“When the Thursdays came to see us, last spring. Once of the first nights you went missing, we stayed up late, talking about you. Thursday told me about some of your cases. He said you tackled some mad opera killer on a roof.”

 “That’s an exaggeration,” Endeavour scoffed. Then he sighed. “I can only hope that Trewlove told him he was a terrible idiot. It’s a miracle that he didn’t get himself killed.”

 

Endeavour could only put Fancy’s survival down to the fact that his theory was true— that those killed must have been targeted.

And that they may not have been too difficult to outwit. Ames must have sent some of his most hopeless thugs onto the job. Anyone with an ounce of smarts, an ounce of savvy, would think twice before they went after that set. It was amazing, the lengths to which such people could go to pursue those who tangled with them.

 

_You really don’t have a clue, do you? They’ll take everything you hold dear._

 

Endeavour shook the thought away. He was Orpheus, and he couldn’t look back.

Not now.

Considering that the third hand on the clock must be . . .

“So, the third hand,” Endeavour said. “They have someone on the inside. The brawn, as it were. A corrupt police officer.”

“Three very different men. Ames the heart, the drive; The don, the calculating mind; the police officer, the will. What brought them together? If we can find out where and how they met, that might lead us to the center of it all.”

 

Bixby nodded, making another smooth turn with one hand resting on top of the wheel. “So, whose house are we going to, then? Sounds like a fairly tony address. Someone who might have an inkling as to who the don might be?”

“No,” Endeavour said.  “Someone who might give us some input on who the corrupt officer might be.”

“A dirty cop?” Bixby blurted. “I thought Thursday wanted you simply to track the source of those letters!”

“We’ll do that, too. After this.”  

“I don’t know about this, Endeavour. I’m half tempted to turn the bloody car around right here,” Bix said.

“It’s perfectly safe, where we’re going, I promise,” Endeavour said.

 

“Well,” Endeavour added, “Unless you’re a tiger.”

“A what?” Bixby asked.  

“He once shot a tiger. The man we’re going to see. In Oxford.”

“In _Oxford_?” Bixby asked. “Oxford, _England_?”

“Well,” Endeavour said. “Not Oxford, Mississippi”

“Who told you this? It sounds mad.”

“Thursday told me. But, I don’t know. Perhaps he was embellishing a bit. I think he had put quite bit of beer away that night,” Endeavour said.

  
 Bixby did not look greatly heartened.

 *******

They pulled up to an old stone and half-timbered house, settled amidst neat hedgerows and thick winter trees. Outside, a thin, wiry man in a wool work coat was stationed before two sawhorses, sawing up an old, gnarled branch that had fallen across the immaculately kept lawn.

The man looked up, confused, no doubt, as to why a bright blue Jag should pull up into his drive. Endeavour felt a sudden surge of anxiety.

It had been years since Mr. Bright had seen him. He wondered if he might have forgotten him—he had only worked for the man for two years, after all. He would have most likely registered only as a blip on a career that had spanned decades.

Endeavour got out of the car and slowly walked over, his hands in the pockets of his gray coat, uncertain. But as he came closer, a flash of recognition lightened Mr. Bright’s face.

“Morse! Good heavens!”  

“Hello, sir,” Morse said.

Behind him, Bixby slowly swung himself out of the car, and in a moment, he was striding surely across the lawn, crunching through last autumn’s crisp, windswept leaves, to join him.

 “This is my . . .” Endeavour began by way of introduction. “This is Bixby.”

“Splendid to meet you, old man,” Bixby said bracingly, offering his hand.

“I wondered if we could, erm, if you had a moment?” Endeavour asked.

 “Yes, yes of course,” Mr. Bright said, shaking Bix's hand, the surprise still evident on his face. “By all means.”

He set the saw down carefully across one of the wooden horses, and then lead them up toward the house.   

“Come in,” he said, “Please.”

He opened a red, arched door, and Endeavour and Bixby followed him into the foyer. The house was overwarm, but on a gray and damp January day, the effect was one of coziness. The whole place smelled a bit like tea and citrus and tobacco.

 “Mrs. Bright is out I’m afraid. Bridge circle, I think.”

Endeavour nodded. He wasn’t sure what response was appropriate. He had never laid eyes on Mrs. Bright, so it hardly mattered. And he was fairly certain Mr. Bright would not want her involved in a conversation about police corruption, at any rate.  

“May I offer you a drink? I generally have a lime-juice and gin about now,” Mr. Bright said.

 

Mr. Bright certainly could offer him a drink. Endeavour had been aching for one ever since the disaster at Bruce’s.

 

“Yes, sir.” Endeavour said.  

“Ah. Yes. Thank you, old man,” Bixby said.

“Well then,” Mr. Bright said, a bit awkwardly, bringing them into a terra-cotta painted drawing room.  “I’ll just go and wash my hands, shall I?”

And then he disappeared down the hall.

Bixby made himself at home in a straight-backed arm chair, while Endeavour wandered about the room.  

Tall windows infused the room with a weak, clean winter light. Along one wall, framing a fireplace that held a crackling fire, stood two tall bookcases, painted white and filled from end to end with rows of old books. Endeavour took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of old paper, so like autumn leaves.

Amidst the old books, there was a new one, with a black and white spine embellished with green letters.

“He bought my first book,” Endeavour said in wonderment, pulling it off the shelf.

Bixby turned to look. “It’s fairly pristine. Doesn’t look as if he read it.”

The comment made Endeavour feel strangely protective of Mr. Bright. He never would have imagined Mr. Bright would have given him much thought at all, let alone that he would have bothered to buy a book of his.

“Well,” Endeavour said. “It’s hardly his cup of tea, I’m sure. It was nice of him to think of me, though.”

Endeavour felt it must be so; he couldn’t think of any reason why Mr. Bright would buy a volume of contemporary poetry, the only book sporting a glossy cover amidst the dusty, well-worn cloth tomes. Seeing a bit of himself there was a bit like seeing a friendly wave from across a far, far distant hill.

So. He was not coming into an enemy camp, then. He had left things with Mr. Bright in too ambivalent a manner to be certain. The last time he had seen him, the Chief Superintendent had been standing, dumbstruck, while Endeavour had been hustled away into a police . . .

 

On the bottom of the shelf were a few carved wooden elephants and vases, souvenirs no doubt, from Mr. Bright’s time overseas. Amidst them, in a silver frame, was a photo of a little girl on a pony, posed next to an Indian man. Endeavour knew Mr. Bright had been with the Colonial Police in India when he was young. But he had never mentioned having any children.

Just then, Mr. Bright’s voice came from behind him.

“Dulcie,” he said.

Endeavour turned.  

“Our daughter,” Mr. Bright explained. “Sweet little thing.”

He must have read the questioning look on his face, because, then, he said, simply.  

“The tropics.”

Endeavour felt his heart sink. It was like falling into a kaleidoscope, one that seems to have a narrow lens, but, when you look through it, you find yourself falling through bright shards of moving, shifting color.

It was like a poem. A story of deep and inexpressible sorrow in eight words.

 

Dulcie.

Our daughter.

Sweet little thing.

The tropics.

 

The mounting action in six words, the denouement in two.

 

Mrs. Bright always seemed to be at some function—it had seemed almost comic, hearing about the whirlwind of her frantic pursuits. Now, it was clear, the tragedy at the center of that frenetic spiral of activity.

Years had passed now: the girl’s old friends would have grown up. If Dulcie was alive, she’d be older now than he was. Would they have remembered their onetime playmate? Most likely not.

 

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

 

Dulcie was a secret shared by two. 

 

Mr. Bright, turned away then, over to a small bar, and began mixing drinks.

“So. Morse. How have you been keeping? It’s been, how long now, since . . . ? Thursday tells me you’ve been doing well.”

“I’m all right, sir” Endeavour said. “Are you enjoying your retirement?”

“Yes,” Mr. Bright said. “Yes. Still try to keep a hand in things. Widows and Orphans, you know. Public Safety Advisory Committee.  I’m going to be shooting an informative television spot, actually. For Traffic.”

“Oh?” Endeavour asked. That was certainly brave of him. Turner was always trying to get him to go on television interviews –ususally on shows with hosts sporting very well-manicured, almost artificial looking hair. In many ways, he was Turner’s creature, but on this, Endeavour remained firm. The thought of sitting there with cameras recording his every move was terrifying.

 

And if he saw himself, would he recognize himself?

 

“So,” Mr. Bright said, handing him a drink in a tall glass, embellished with cut glass leaves. “What can I help you with?”

It was as if they had just seen one another on Wednesday last. “You were in India. With the Colonial Police. Isn’t that right?” Endeavour asked.

“Yes,” Bright said, handing Bixby his drink.  

“When did you come back to Oxford?”

“But this is excellent,” Bixby said.

“Fresh lime. That’s the secret,” he said to Bixby, before turning back to Endeavour. “1947. Independence, you know.”

 “So, you’d been in Oxford for decades, longer than anyone else?

“Well,” Mr. Bright said humbly, “just about as long as anyone living, I’d say.”

“So you must have seen, over the years, many other men coming on, maybe even some from abroad? Such as . . . possibly . . . from Jamaica?” Endeavour asked.

“Does this have anything to do with any suspicions you have of corruption in the force?” Mr. Bright said.

Endeavour paused; he hadn’t expected Mr. Bright to be quite so forthright.

“I know what it looks like, Morse,” Mr. Bright said. “And I read the papers.  It seems incredible such things could be going on in Oxford if the watchmen were watching the gates. Seems rather as if they’ve gone to sleep. Deliberately so, one might say.”  

“But yes, he continued. “There have been two or three, in from the West Indies, especially as the varying colonies achieved independence. My replacement, as it were, actually, was one of them. Transferred from the Colonial Police in Jamaica back in '55. CS Dawkins.”

Endeavour fell back into a chair with a graceless thump.

 

Dawkins.

Dawkins had wanted him to leave the station and then he suddenly wanted him back. 

Because he thought he’d help with the case?

Or to keep a better eye on him?

 

“Endeavour?” Bixby asked.

“You think there’s ought amiss?” Mr. Bright asked. “Concerning CS Dawkins?”

“Cromwell Ames. He’s a new mob boss in Oxford who has been taking on Eddie Nero. He’s from Jamaica.”

“Well,” Mr. Bright said bracingly. “Just because he was once stationed in Jamaica, doesn’t mean there is necessarily any connection between the two men. I’m sure there must be 5 million people in Jamaica.”  

“1.87 million, actually,” Endeavour said hollowly.

 “Well, see, there you are. Snowball’s chance.” 

“What do you think of Dawkins? Sir?” Endeavour asked.

“Well now. Well enough I should say. He may have a ... slightly different leadership style, method of organization, one might say. But we’ve always gotten on.”

 

Endeavour scowled. That was as close as people like Mr. Bright came to saying they didn’t like someone.

 

“Morse, If I might venture to ask, how has it come to be that you are involved in such matters?”

“Thursday, well, actually, Strange, called me in on a case. There have been a few threats left, with quotes from different poems and plays. I was brought in to consult.”

“And does that have anything to do with investigating matters of possible police corruption?”Mr. Bright asked, shrewdly. 

“Well. Not exactly. But if you trace it all . . . “  

 

But Mr. Bright cut him off. “I’m not sure if you’re the person to be concerned with this, striking out on your own.”

“No. I don’t think so either,” Endeavour admitted. “But, who is the person, sir?”

And it was there, after all. The ghosts of the past. It _wasn’t_ as if they had just seen one another Wednesday last.

“I am going to see Thursday," Endeavour clarified. "At four. I’ll tell him my concerns.”

Mr. Bright seemed mollified by this. “That will do then. That will do very well.”

Endeavour rose to leave. “Thank you, sir, for speaking with me.”

 

He went to shake his hand goodbye, but as he took it, Mr. Bright suddenly looked uncertain.

“What happened,” he said. “ I erm. I can’t change yesterday. But a better tomorrow, yes? For all of us.”

Once, Endeavour might have heard those words as an empty platitude. Now, he could not. These were not words merley spoken. They were words that had been lived.

 

Mr. Bright couldn’t change yesterday. He’d been wanting to change yesterday for years—for years, even before he, Endeaovur, had been born.

 

Endeavour tried to put as much into one word as Mr. Bright had said in eight, to show he understood.

“Sir,” he said.

 

 

***********

 

“Ah.” Miss Frazil said, looking up from a set of proofs. “So you’ve finally come by for that interview, have you?”

“What interview is that?” Endeavour asked.

Miss Frazil leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, smiling bemusedly. “You said you’d give me the story. Behind the poems in the woods.”

“Oh. Did I?”

Yes,” she said slowly, slightly arching one brow.  

 

Endeavour had no memory of telling her that. This, then, was one of those moments when his notebook failed him; he couldn't take a glance at it without both she and Bix noticing.

And why would he have said such a thing? When he had tried so hard to block that entire day from his mind?

He had eventually came to wonder if there might have been something in that wine. Although it was true that he and Nick Wilding had drunk from the same bottle.

But then again, by that night, Nick Wilding had been rendered into little more than a vegetable.

And would things have been different for Nick Wilding if he had not lived in a hothouse of a band, a band so much like his small set of classics students?

 

Endeavour realized then that Miss Frazil was looking at him with concern.

 

“I asked about an interview about the Jerome Hogg biography, and you said no. So I asked if you would at least talk a bit about the poems in the woods, and you said yes,” Miss Frazil said, helpfully.

Ah. That explained it.

“Oh, well if you had mentioned Jerome’s book,” Endeavour began. “I must just have said that because I wanted to leave and was trying to be polite.”

 

“ _Endeavour_ ,” Bixby said, admonition in his voice.

“What?” he asked.

 

 _Now_ what had he done wrong? 

 

He’d just have to try again....

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t really tell you the story of why I did that because . . . well, because I don’t know why I did it.”

“But your editor had said . . . “ Miss Frazil began.

“I think that might be what they’re calling ‘spin’ these days,” Bixby intervened.

Miss Frazil quirked a smile.

 “And this is?” she asked, looking to Endeavour.

“Joss Bixby,” Bixby supplied, smartly.

Miss Frazil nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I thought as much. I’ve seen your photograph . . . but,” she added uncertainly, looking from him to Endeavour, "you were on that list.”

“What list?” Endeavour asked.  

“Of potential investors. You asked me about Holloway Construction. Just before New Year’s. To ask my source in records if he might provide a list of potential investors.”

“Oh. Yes,” Endeavour said. “But you never told me.”

She looked at him, again befuddled. “I called Thursday. You told me to call Thursday.”  

 

Oh. That was right. He had. That was after Dawkins had had words with Fancy. And he had resolved never to set foot again in the station.

 

“As it happens, Inspector Thursday found a bit of an inside source, as it were. Not that I was able to tell him much. The evening took rather a macabre turn,” Bixby said.

 

Inside source, my arse, Endeavour thought. It was as clear as clear that Bixby hadn’t the slightest idea what he was getting involved in.

 

Miss Frazil’s eyes snapped up at Bixby's words. “You were there? Everyone has been infuriatingly quiet on what happened last night.”

 “And Bixby is going to be infuriatingly quiet, too,” Endeavour said. “I’m not here about Poplar Hall.”

 

It was too late for that. That threat has already come to pass.

Bruce knew the names of the three guests, but not the name of the waiter. If Endeavour was right, he had just been caught in the crossfire, an accidental victim, a man on a list that would have grown in not for George Fancy.

The waiter. What was his name? Did Max, at least, know?

He was Mary Tremlett. He was Frida Yellen. He was Endeavour Morse. He was a nobody from nowhere.

 

If Endeavour had been faster, if he hadn’t been so cowardly, If he had been in the nick, he would have known. _Every_ _possible_ _landscape_. And then all of the land investors together? He would have known that was the next strike.

He’d have to be quicker the next time. That was the only tribute he could pay.

 

“It’s a bit of a stretch,” Endeavour said. I’m worried you might think it sounds a bit mad.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bixby arrange his face into a careful mask.

“I was wondering if you might find out some information for me. I’m interested in CS Dawkins. His past. Perhaps, you can tell your sources that he’s retiring and you’re writing a retrospective of his career? I’m particularly interested in the years he spent in Jamaica. If he’s ever arrested anyone named Cromwell Ames.”

“Jamaica. That might take a lot of phone calls. Not to mention long distance charges. Will I get the scoop, if it comes to anything?" Miss Frazil asked. 

“Yes,” Endeavour said.

“And will you do an interview with me?” she asked.

Endeavour hesitated. She knew he had him, that much was clear. “Yes,” he said. “Just as long as there are no dreadful puns in the headline.”

“What? When have I done such a thing?” she asked, in mock outrage.

“Top of the Cops,” Endeavour said simply.

Miss Frazil laughed. “Not even ‘Former Oxford Constable’s arresting words take literary world by storm?'”

“No.”

“Former Constable turns a new leaf?”

“No.”  

“Not even ‘How Oxford’s Hottest New Poet Rose Through The Ranks?'” she asked.

She seemed to be enjoying herself a little too much.

“No,” Endeavour said, with a twitch of a smile. “And besides, that’s inaccurate. I never rose through the ranks. I never even passed my sergeant’s. And please don’t say I’m ‘hot.”

“Whyever not?” Bixby laughed. “Whoever says otherwise must never have seen you in that kilt.” 

 

It was impossible to take Bixby anywhere. Here he was, trying to stop Oxford’s most deadly crime spree and ...

 

“Oh, did you get that when you were in Scotland, then?” Miss Frazil asked. “Perhaps we could get a photogr. . .

“No,” Endeavour said.

Then he frowned. How did she know he was in Scotland?

And also...

“Actually, I think I have to ask my publisher, before I give an interview. I think they put something in my contract, saying that I have to have it cleared through them, before I speak to the press.”

  
“They sure as hell have,” Bixby said with a laugh.

“I’ll let you know,” Endeavour said. “I’m sure it can be arranged.”

“Fair enough,” Miss Frazil said. “So, if I find out anything, would you like me to call Thursday?

“No,” he said. “You can call me. At Thames Valley.”

This time he would not allow himself to be chased off. He was not afraid of Deare or Dawkins.

After all, he wasn’t simply DC Morse, a nobody from nowhere, was he? He was Endeavour Morse, and he was well-known, and, even more incredibly, loved. If they tried to railroad him again, there would be a protest, an outcry.

And, even if the worst came to pass, he had Bixby now, didn’t he? He’d at least be able to afford a good lawyer. 

 As if it would come to that. Men like Val Todd, who has once hissed to him his ugly threats, were as nothing, compared to Bix. Bixby could buy up men of their ilk as if _they_ were nobodies from nowhere.

And...

Well, look at that.

It hadn’t taken long.

He had become one of them.

Well, so be it.

They say it takes one to know one.

Perhaps it also takes one to fight one.

 *******

“Bix, there is something you can help me with, actually.”

“Oh?" Bixby asked, keeping his eyes firmly on the road. "Is that so? So far I’ve just been your chauffeur.” 

 

Well, that _was_ helpful, actually. He had gotten rather used to driving on the right.

But he certainly didn’t intend on telling Bix that.

 

“It’s about cheques.”

“Cheques?”

“Yes,” Endeavour said. “Say Turner writes a cheque to me, and then I sign it over to you—you end up, then, with a cheque with Turner’s name on it, right?”

“Yes,” Bixby said. “Is this about Thursday?”

“Mmmmmm,” Endeavour hummed in agreement. 

“Well,” he said, “I haven’t signed your cheques over to any other party. I just use them to pay the mortgage, old man.”

 

Then he smiled to himself. God only knew what was so amusing about a mortgage.

 

”But Charlie Thursday?” Endeavour asked.

”Your guess is as good as mine,” Bix said.

”You don’t think that’s why Thursday is so inconsistent? About what I’m involved in and what I’m not? You don't think he’s afraid of what I might find out?”

”No,” Bix said. “And I don’t think he’s been inconsistent. I think he just doesn’t want you to get shot.”

”I’m not George Fancy,” Endeavour said. 

 

He thought for a moment and said, “You don’t think I should try to talk to Mrs. Thursday, do . . .”

“No,” Bix said.

 

”All right,” Endeavour said. “I only wish Thursday would give one of my ideas a try, at least. Oh. Turn here.”

“What? This is the way home,” Bix said.

 

They were approaching the lake house. Two people were walking along the road, one with curling hair and a gray wool coat, carrying a satchel diagonally over his shoulder.

Endeavour had been wondering when word might get out by those who tended to congregate around the old lake house that he was staying at Lake Silence. He wasn’t eager to be spotted.

He slipped down into the well of the passenger seat.

Bixby’s eyes widened in surprise. And then he began to laugh.

“Really?” he asked.

“Really what?” Endeavour asked, looking up from where he was crouched.

Bixby shifted gears with one steady hand and shrugged. “You just seem a bit preoccupied. I wouldn’t have thought you would be in the mood.”

What the hell was he . . . ?

Oh.

“I’m not at _all_  ‘in the mood',” Endeavour said matter-of-factly. “ I’m hiding from that look-alike.”

“Oh,” Bixby said. “Usually when you slip down like that, you..." 

“Well not when I’m on a _case_ ,” Endeavour said in exasperation. 

 

Bixby certainly didn’t make for a very professional bagman.

Ah, well. 

 

“I’ll be sure to put that on the top of my list as soon as I’ve busted up one of the most lethal crime rings in Oxford history,” Endeavour said. 

Bixby laughed again.

But he did that often—laughed when Endeavour was speaking in earnest. Endeavour hadn’t liked that at all, what Bixby had said back at Bruce's.  He had thought . . . or he had hoped . . . that Bixby wouldn’t find those old games he once played  as appealing anymore. That Bix might value his life as more than something to be gambled with.

That he might be happy enough, just staying with him.

 

Endeavour took a chance, rising up onto the seat slightly to look out to the window.

“Turn here,” he said.

“Here?” Bixby asked, surprised.

“Yes,” Endeavour said.

 

*********

 “Pagan! My God. What a ghastly morning. Where did you go tearing off to? Did you find out anything about who might have sent those letters?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Endeavour said.

“Me?” Tony asked. “Why? What do I know about anything? Just a few hours ago, I barely escaped a public stoning.”

“Oh,” Endeavour said. “That.”  

“Yes. _That_. If looks could kill, I’d be dead by now. I never would have said such a thing if I had any idea. I was told that these letters were meant as threats, but ours just seemed preposterous. It seemed a bit of a joke."

“So you really . . .  You really never knew, did you?” Endeavour asked.

Tony tossed the papers he was holding down onto the chaos of his desk and spread his hands wide. “How could I have known? How could I have dreamed that was possible? Surely, Pippa would have known, wouldn’t you have thought?” he said.

 

Endeavour frowned. “She would have known what?” he asked.

Tony looked at him incredulously, sputtering to a standstill. “That . . . well . . . I’m not as . . . . _adaptable_ as you are, shall we say.”  

 

Adaptable? What was Tony on about? Endeavour was not at all adaptable. If he had his way, he'd never leave the house.

But, it was true, he had changed careers quite a few times, much more than Tony who. . . . well, what exactly _was_ it that Tony did, anyway? 

Oh.

Of course that must be it.

“Oh,” Endeavour said. “You mean because I’ve emigrated to France?”

Tony looked at him, the same look of confusion on his face. Then he said, “Yes, because ‘ _you’ve emigrated to France._ '"

 

But the way in which he said it made it seem as if he was saying something else.  

"Or rather, because I’ve always lived in France, if you take my meaning," Tony said.

“When have you ever lived in France?" Endeavour asked uncertainly. "I’ve known you for fourteen years. And anyway, what would that have to do with Pippa?”  

Bixby rolled his eyes. “He's not talking about ' _emigrating to France,_ ' old man,” he said. “He’s saying, in his rather roundabout way, that he’s not sexually attracted to women.”

Tony looked affronted, casting Bixby a look as if he had never seen anything quite like him.

 

“Well, that’s hardly anything that one . . .” Tony began. 

 

“But of course he is," Endeavour said. "He's always flirting with women wherever he goes. He even bailed out on me to chat up some girl in a green mask at that party, the one where you drug me off to _'look at a painting_.'"

“Oh, no” Bixby said. “Don’t you put those quotation marks around something _I_ said. I _did_ want you to look at a painting.”

“Quotation marks?” Endeavour asked. But Tony was already rising to the defense.

 

“That’s just good manners.  Women like to hear that sort of thing,” Tony protested.

So . . . was it true, then?

 

”I suppose,” Endeavour said doubtfully. “But I would hazard a guess they might like it better if you actually meant it."

”But it’s just . . . I don’t know . . . charm . . . the way you play the game. It’s not _supposed_ to mean anything,” Tony said. 

Endeavour could hardly suppress a cry of surprise.  “ _That’s_ what I was saying at New Year’s. How is anyone supposed to know when it _does_ mean something?”

"I don’t  . . . . " Tony faltered. "I don’t know." He shook his head. "Christ. What a disaster. Has she really been harboring some hope that. . . all this time . . .  I feel like I’ve ruined that girl’s life.”

 

“I’m the one who ruined Pippa’s life,” Endeavour said heavily.

 

“You? What did _you_ do?” Tony asked.

"The morning. After the bacchanal. She knew something was wrong. She wanted to find the road, to try to get a ride back to Oxford. I’m the one that convinced her to go back to the house."

“Find the road?" Tony asked. "Dressed in Susan’s homemade chitons? You would have looked like a pair of lunatics. And then, if you were picked up somewhere, so close to where that poor man’s body was found? You might very well have been arrested.”

Endeavour startled. He had never thought of that possibility.

 

And then, there it was, the awful question.

 

"If that happened, do you think they would have told the truth?" Endeavour asked.  "Bruce, Susan, and Henry?"

“I think Henry might well have. He did always seem to have set himself as, I don’t know, responsible for us all.”

“But Susan?” Endeavour asked.

“I don’t know. Yes. I suppose so. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Yes," Endeavour said. "I suppose.”

“It’s a terrible question, Pagan,” Tony said, as if he thought it rather tasteless that he had even brought the matter up. 

 

 Bixby was watching them shrewdly. “That’s all a bit melodramatic, surely? Pippa seems a tough girl.”

“Did you see her face when Thrusday had her read that note?” Endeavour asked.

“She came back, though. She was the only one who kept a clear enough head to realize the poems were all written by the same poet,” Bixby said. 

“ _I_ knew they were all from Wyatt,” Endeavour protested.

Bixby quirked a smile. “Well, you didn’t tell that to Thursday, did you? You were too busy sparring off with Susan about your _‘writing holiday.’_ ”

 

Oh. That must be what Bixby meant by quotation marks.

 

"Can you honestly blame me? You heard her. It certainly isn't any of her business where I go or don't go," Endeavour said. " _Missing persons report,"_ he added scathingly.  

Bixby’s eyebrows seemed to be traveling further and further up his forehead.

 

“And besides, I shouldn’t have been there in both capacities,” said Endeavour crisply.

“Oh. Is that it? So, in what capacity are you here now?” Bixby asked.

 

And he had gotten so far off track. It was easy somehow.  He kept looking back, when he was supposed to be looking to the center. He had almost forgotten what he had wanted to ask Tony.

 

"Tony," he ventured, "You keep in touch with a lot of people from university days, go to a lot of parties. Do you know of any one up at the colleges who may have made a trip, or several trips, to the West Indies? Specifically, to Jamaica?"

Tony considered for a moment and shrugged. "Well, people are always flitting off to the West Indies, aren’t they? If they go in for that sort of thing?"

 

"You said a center," Bixby said. "Does it have to be a place? Might it be more metaphorical? Some common ground, on which they met?"

 

"Like what?" Endeavour asked. "They only thing the three seem to have in common is . . . well, a desire for money, I suppose. For power.”

Tony laughed ruefully. "That doesn't narrow it down much. All the dons are interested in money. That line of reasoning might even take you right back to Jerome Hogg. He's sold his own friends out for money."

“Who you mean?” Endeavour asked.

Tony looked at him in surprise. "Us," he said, simply.

Endeavour snorted. “When were we ever his friends?

“Well,” Tony, said, looking uncomfortable. “We sort of were. He wanted to be.”

“I never had that impression, particularly,” Endeavour said.  

“Everyone wanted to be invited to my aunt’s house.  How do you think _you_ came to be invited that weekend?" Tony asked. 

"I’m sure I don’t know," Endeavour said. 

"That entire fall, it seemed, wherever we went, people were sort of looking in on us, watching us, hoping to be invited up. Susan used to say it was like being under a microscope. And it was, rather. At one party, she said, one man in particular was watching her, as if he would swallow her up with his eyes if he could. But you were just standing there talking to him as if you were above it all, as if you couldn’t care less." 

"That's because I _couldn't_ care less," Endeavour said. 

"Well. See. There you are," Tony said. "We knew you were our sort right away." 

"I couldn't care less," Endeavour clarified, "because I didn't know you even went up there." 

 

 What was this? He was drafted into a group that had so changed his life on the basis of a misunderstanding? His awkwardness mistaken for the haughtiness they so often seemed to prize?

 

“That’s why Susan invited me?" Endeavour asked, incredulously. 

"Well. Not entirely," Tony admitted. "We had, well. . . . We had been curious about you for some time, of course."

 _“Curious?_ ” Endeavour asked. This did not sound much better. “Why? Because you never met someone from Lincolnshire?" 

“Probably because they were wondering if you were planning on living in England or emigrating to France, and couldn’t quite make the call,” Bixby said with a laugh.

“What’s this?"  Endeavour asked.

Tony cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable.

 

 _Emigrating to France?_ Endeavour didn't know what Bix was on about; he was too preoccupied with the question of Jerome Hogg.

 

“But it couldn’t be Jerome,” Endeavour said. “He was a targeted victim, wasn’t he? His car was bombed . . . but then again. . . he’s the only one. . . He’s been the only target to have survived, isn't he?"

 

“I thought you said it was Jerome Hogg who might be behind that false set of letters, the ones we were sent, the ones written on a different typewriter,” Bixby said.  

Endeavour shrugged. “Two separate typewriters don’t necessarily mean two separate writers,” he said. “He could have sent both. Perhaps he used a different typewriter on purpose, to send that divergent, more frivolous set, just to throw us off a bit.”

“Although . . .” Endeavour added. . . 

“Although what?” Tony asked.

 

“It all seems a bit extreme for Jerome Hogg,” Endeavour said. “He can be a complete arse—always has been. But involved in murder? I don’t see it.”

“Don’t let appearances fool you," Tony said. "He’s certainly ruthless enough, in his own way."  

“It’s nearly four. You told Thursday you would meet him at the station," Bixby said. 

Endeavour glanced at the clock on Tony's study wall. A hand for Dawkins. A hand for Ames.

A hand for Jerome Hogg?

It didn't quite fit. He just didn’t have that, well, panache. Wouldn’t someone like Cromwell Ames find the man ridiculous?

But. Jerome _was_ at Lonsdale--the same college where two students had recently died from tainted heroin. And Jerome must certainly hate him to have written that book about him, to have rewritten his whole life. It was a death of sorts to realize that somewhere, in the pages of Hogg's book, there weren't just a few lapses, but an entire life that he didn’t remember. He didn't like to think about it much. It was easier to be like Bix—just laugh the whole thing off.

 

"We should go," Endeavour said. He hated to leave when he still felt so unsure about the pieces he had gathered. He had wasted too much time, playing over thoughts about that night, the night of the bacchanal. It was as if they'd never find their way back to how things were before. 

It was as if they'd never be able to tell any other story. 

Until they finally told it. 

 

But now, he supposed, he and Tony had. 

"Tony?" Endeavour said, as they were leaving.

"Yes?" 

'You know, you don't have to call me 'Pagan,' It was only ever Bruce who came up with that name." 

"All right," Tony said. "But then what should I call you?" 

"You can call me Endeavour. If you'd like." 

Tony nodded. "All right." Then he added, cautiously, "Endeavour." 

************

Endeavour made a slow rotation in Jim Strange's swivel chair. His mind was going in circles; he had circled and circled and he felt like a snowstorm. He was like a moon of Saturn. And Pippa and the bacchanal and Mr. Bright and Dulcie and Dawkins and Jamaica and Miss Frazil and why did he toss all of his poems up into the wind?

He wished that Thursday was here. If he could start laying out the points of it all, he could set the points in lines, not circles. He turned again, spinning slowly in the chair.

Then he spun around again.

Then he realized that Bixby was staring at him, a crease forming between his brow.

 

He stopped spinning. 

 

“We should have stopped in at the pub for some lunch,” Bixby said.

“I’m all right.”

“I’m not,” Bixby said. “I’m famished. We’ll get something once you’ve spoken to Thursday."

 

Just then, WPC Trewlove came striding in with a handful of files. “Where’s Thursday?” Endeavour asked. “He was so adamant about us meeting us here.”

“I’m not sure,” Trewlove said. “I’m just back from Jericho. Stolen car. I’m sure he’ll be along in a minute.”

“Is your boy all right?” Endeavour asked. “Is he out of hospital?”

“If you mean DC Fancy, then yes. They’ve got him on light duties, sorting mail with DC Tyler. They’ve made it a bit of a priority since that one letter went so long unnoticed," she said. She set the files down and looked at him coolly. "But, you should know, he’s not 'my boy.'”

“Isn’t he?” Bixby asked.

Trewlove’s face remained stoic. “I’ve told him not to get too serious. “We’re young. We have to put our careers first.”

“Why?” Endeavour asked. “A career won’t hold you at three in the morning when the wolves come circling.”

Trewlove was watching him; her eyes were solemn, but her mouth twitched a bit. “ _Do_ they come circling, Morse?”

 

Endeavour wasn’t sure what to say; she must be awfully young if she had to ask that.

 

“Yes,” Endeavour said, simply.

But it was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flitted away, as if she was unable to meet his gaze, and when he looked to Bixby, he was looking oddly uncomfortable.

It was one of those times, evidently, when one wasn’t supposed to tell the truth.

 

Endeavour was glad when Constable Tyler came running through the aisles of desks; anything that might distract them from what he had said would be welcome at this point—even Tyler.

But then, it was clear something was wrong: Tyler looked to be in a state of absolute panic. Endeavour sat up, watching him carefully. 

“Trewlove, haven’t you heard?" Tyler said, panting to catch his breath. "There’s been a complete throw down over on Tull Street. It sounds as if all hell is breaking loose. A pet shop has had its windows entirely blown out. We’re all to get over there now.”

Then he rounded on Morse. “And where the hell have you been? Didn’t Thursday give you my message? I left it for him first thing this morning. There’s been two red letters come in.”

“What?” Endeavour asked, jumping up from the chair.  He scanned the desk and found a message on a yellow note pad, dated from early that morning.

“More letters?" Endeavour asked. "Why didn’t Thursday tell me about this when he came over? What has he been playing at?" 

“I’ve got to get over to Tull Street,” Tyler said. “They’re in the mail room, on that first table when you come in. Fancy’s down there. He can show you.”

“All right,” Endeavour said.

Endeavour turned and hurried through the aisles of oceans of desks, the way Tyler had just come. And he was Orpheus, and he was going back down that brutal industrial staircase, the one with metal bars for bannisters, down into the underworld. And he heard footsteps behind him, but he didn’t look back. If he took a second to look back, he could find himself too late, once again. Too late to stop whatever it was that was coming.

 

“Where are the letters?” he shouted, bursting into the room.

DC Fancy looked up from where he was sitting at a sorting table.

“They’re here,” Fancy said. “They’re clean. No prints. Just like the others.”

Endeavour snatched the first one up and read: 

 

_Gawain, he gripped his axe, and swung it up on high, the left foot on the ground he setteth steadily, upon the neck so bare, he let the blade alight_

 

“The sharp edge of the axe, the bones asunder smite.  Sheer through the flesh it smote, the neck was cleaved in two,” Endeavour completed. "It’s a passage from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Then he turned to Fancy, “Isn’t the Green Knight a pub, over on Tull Street?”

“Yeah, it is,” Fancy said. “One of Eddie Nero’s favorite watering holes.”

For a moment, Endeavour and Fancy looked at one another, the implication clear. If the threat implicit in the one letter was being brought to fruition now, then the second . . .

 

Endeavour picked up the second letter, one written on red paper, just like the others.

 But it wasn’t just like the others—across the page, the r’s were leaping.

Endeavour read: 

_“What might the staying of my blood portend? Is it unwilling I should write the bill? Why streams it not, that I may write afresh . . . ”_

 

 “ . . . Faustus gives to thee his soul,” Endeavour said aloud, completing the line.

 

_“He would sell his soul for tenure.”_

 

That’s what Jerome Hogg had said about Alexander Reece at the New Year's Eve party. 

 

 _"_ _And, somehow, Jerome’s always finding his way into my office—usually to help himself to paper or a book, so I do hear things.”  Reece took a sip of his drink and added, “Although one would think with all the money he’s gotten burning you at the stake, he’d be able to afford his own paper clips.”_

 

Jerome was always going into Reece's office.

It was Reece.

"It's Alexander Reece," Endeavour said. "And Jerome knew. Jerome knew that Recce was working with Ames. Reece told me, at the New Year's party, that Jerome is always going into his office, borrowing things— paper clips, typewriter ribbon. On one of his foraging expeditions, Jerome must have seen something that led him onto him. He has been blackmailing him ever since, taking a share of the cut."

"And Reece soon tired of that," Endeavour continued. "What was in the letter we found before the car bomb went off? _He’s a lie and the father of lies_. How better to take away a blackmailer’s power than to cast doubt on his validity? So that anything he says might be discounted as false, anyway? If Hogg tried to speak, it would just be Reece's word against the "father of lies.'"

 

 Fancy and Bix both nodded, to let him know they understood. 

 

“So then Reece planned the car bomb to frighten Jerome, to get him to back off, at least, if not actually to kill him. And Jerome handled that with bravado, but he was frightened. He wanted someone else to know."

"So, he sent this,” Endeavour said, holding up the paper with the Faustus quote. "At the party, Jerome told me that Alexander Reece would sell his soul for tenure. So he sent this note, cluing us in to Reece. It wasn't hard; Jerome knew where to find the red paper, because of all the snooping he had done in Reece's office."

"And, by way of extra insurance, he sent those other, fraudulent letters to us, letters that referred to all that university gossip that he doubtless hashed over in his book. Just to get us thinking in the right direction."

 

 

_"Word is, you’re helping out with the case.”_

_“How did you hear I was helping with the case?” Endeavour asked._

_Reece huffed a little laugh. “We might say many things about Jerome, but the truth is, he does have the ear of the city."_

 

 

"To get _me_ thinking in the right direction," Endeavour amended. "He knew. He knew I was working on the case. Reece said that Jerome had told him that I was." 

 

He put the papers down. "We need to get over to Lonsdale," he said. 

 

And he was Orpheus, and he was going back, right back to Lonsdale, to his own underworld,  . . . and the scent of old paper and the feel of cold marble as you round a columned corner . . . and he would be right back at the start, right back to where he had first gotten off the bus from Lincolnshire and so many, so many things still seemed possible.  

Somehow, he knew that this was where he had been heading all along: in looking to the center, he would have to look back. 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter felt like a lot of . . . talking! Sorry! They next chapter will end the story with the final showdown and lots of fluffy epilogues! 
> 
> Then on to a season 6 remix: In which underdogs Endeavour Morse and Mr. Bright work together to show up DCI Ronnie Box, while Thursday tries to keep Morse from going too far, and MaxDeBryn and Jim Strange stand back and let it all happen (even helping Morse and Bright behind the scenes now and then.) XD
> 
> If I do get to see all of season 6, that is :0)


	9. Chapter 9

Endeavour and Bixby’s footsteps echoed down the long corridor, Endeavour one step ahead, his head turning from side to side as he went, checking the name placards on the office doors.  Lonsdale was nearly deserted, it seemed; only a few of the staff had trickled in to begin preparing for the Hilary term. 

Finally, Endeavour ground to a halt before Jerome Hogg’s office door.

“Hogg?” Bixby asked. “I would have thought you would have wanted to talk to Reece.”

“It will be easier to get the truth out of Jerome,” Endeavour explained. “He blows whichever way the wind blows—he’ll be anxious to ingratiate himself with us once he realizes we’ve got Reece.”

“Have we?” Bixby asked.

But Endeavour didn’t answer. He pushed the heavy wooden door open.

The rooms were empty. A solitary Victorian desk stood before large windows, and matching bookcases topped with ornate scrollwork lined the north wall. It was as if a hush had descended upon the place; all was quiet and still in the weak January light.

Endeavour strode over to the desk and snapped on a reading lamp, throwing a circle of yellow light onto the desk. Then, he collapsed into Hogg’s chair and began opening drawers—first one, and then another. In the third, he found a stack of red paper. He cranked a piece into the typewriter and struck the keys, typing one word:

 

**Endeavour**

 

He sat back in the chair and scrutinized the page.

“The _r_ didn’t jump,” Endeavour said. “It’s perfectly aligned.”

Bixby circled around to look at the paper over Endeavour’s shoulder. “Maybe he used one at his house just to . . .” he began, before stopping mid-sentence, his attention apparently caught by something on the desk.

He picked up a set of papers. “What in the hell is this?” he asked.

“What?” Endeavour asked.

Bixby held the first folder up for Endeavour to read.

“Holloway Construction?” Endeavour asked, incredulously. “What would Jerome know about that?”

Bixby opened the folder. “Well, look at this,” he said, handing two cheques to Endeavour.

“Cheques from Charles Dodson? What’s this stamp?” Endeavour asked. 

Bixby took them back and looked at them.  “They were no good. The bank wouldn’t accept them.”

“You mean, as if his account was overdrawn?” Endeavour asked.

Bixby nodded and looked thoughtful for a moment; then he opened the last drawer, the bottom left one. Under a few papers, there was a brown paper package. When Bix picked it up, white power spilled from a small tear in the top of the wrapper.

Endeavour let out a cry of surprise.

“I can’t believe this,” Endeavour said. “It’s too much. I can’t believe that Hogg would keep these things right here, so exposed to anyone who might come in.”

He paused for a moment, furrowing his forehead in thought.  “It’s Reece,” he said, finally. “It’s all of it been Reece.  He wrote the second set of letters on a misaligned typewriter on purpose, trying to lead me to think that somebody else wrote them. Trying to lead me to think _Jerome_ wrote them. So I would come down here and find all of these things. It’s a frame up.”

He shook his head slightly and added, “But then, why would Reece send that letter with the quote from Faustus, leading me to straight to him?”

 

Then Endeavour froze; the hairs on the back of his neck felt as if they were standing straight on end.

 

“It’s not just a frame up," Endeavour said. "It’s a . . .”

 

“Set up?” completed Reece, stepping into the room, a gun raised in his right hand.

 

Endeavour felt his heart hammering in his chest. It was as if time had slowed down, like the painstaking tick of a clock.

 

“That’s it,” Reece said, quietly, his blue eyes narrowed. “I’d stay right there, right where you are, if I were you. Dawkins is already on his way to arrest you.”

 

At these words, Endeavour found his voice. “ _Arrest_ me? For what?” he cried. “Breaking and entering? The door was not even locked!”

“No,” Reece said, taking a few steps closer.  “Murder.”

“What?” Endeavour gasped, and he scarcely recognized his own voice; it seemed to be coming from an ocean away. “Who is it that I allegedly killed now?”

Reece swung the point of the gun from Endeavour to Bix. “Him,” he said simply. “And, as soon as he gets back from his meeting with Chamberlain, Jerome Hogg.”

“You’re mad!” Endeavour sputtered. ‘You’re mad!”

“Well, of course it will be _I_ who _actually_ killed them. But I think it will be rather easy to lead the world to believe it was you. And it is, after all, the world’s opinion that matters, rather than the truth, isn’t it?” Reece asked.

“You’re mad!” Endeavour shouted again. “It wouldn’t be easy to frame me at all. There will be all sorts of evidence, there will . . .”

“Evidence?” Reece drawled. “What? Like gun residue on my hands?”

“Yes,” Endeavour said, emphatically.

“I don’t know,” Reece said. “After I’ve shot the Great Bixby here right before your eyes, I think it will be rather easy to get the gun into your hand and have you fire a shot, don’t you?  You’ll probably just daze right out, just like you did at the club last night, won’t you?”

Endeavour startled at that, and Reece continued on. “Oh, yes, I heard all about it. The point is: You’ll have the residue on your hands. Of course, so will I, since, after you killed them, I managed to wrestle the gun away from you. But, tragically, I was just moments too late to save the others.” He laughed softly. "What a pity." 

Reece took another step closer. “And, then, most importantly, of course,” he added, “Dawkins is rather a good friend of mine. I think he’ll be rather better disposed to believe me than you.”

“But why?” Endeavour cried. 

“Why?”  Reece asked. “I think everyone will know why. Poor Pagan finally snapped. You really are incredibly stupid. You still think, with your photo in every bookshop in Britain, that you can travel about anonymously? Everyone knows how your money bags there threw you out last fall; three different people on staff saw you, when you were up in Scotland, wandering around like an idiot. You were the talk of the high table all autumn.”

“And, of course, you would want to kill Jerome. After all, it’s Jerome’s fault, isn’t it? It’s no wonder Bixby served you your walking papers after he read all about your colorful antics. My God, Pagan. I never realized how much you got around.”

“But why?” Endeavour asked. “Why are you doing this? Why?”

 

Reece appeared to give the matter some thought. “Well, getting Jerome out of my hair suits me just fine, and all the better for me if he dies with so much evidence tying him to Cromwell Ames in his desk, wouldn’t you agree? Rather takes the spotlight off of me. And, as for you, . . . you ruined by life.”

“Ah. Is that it?” Bixby asked, with a bored drawl.  “There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.”

Reece cocked the gun with a click. “You shut up,” he said.

He turned the gun on Endeavour. “You do everything the wrong way. You can’t follow through with one god damn thing. You get sent down after three years, quit the army after two. Can’t even make it as an imbecile police officer for four. And it’s not just a career, you can’t seem to stick with, is it Pagan? Are you sure your nickname shouldn’t have been Caesar, rather than Susan’s?  “Every man’s woman and every woman’s man.” And despite it all, look at you! Set up in a godamned chateau in France. While you’re making hundreds of thousands of pounds scribbling down whatever pops into that delusional head of yours, I’m stuck grading plodding essays written by earls’ spendthrift sons and writing forty-seven-page journal articles on one prepositional phase of Herodotus!”

“What’s that got to do with me? How am I responsible for your unhappiness?” Endeavour asked. 

“Because you had just what I wanted, and you threw it all away. You don’t even remember that night, do you, you arrogant little prick?”

 

Endeavour had no idea what “night” Reece was even speaking of; it was clear the man had become completely unhinged.  Endeavour could only shake his head. “No,” he ventured quietly. 

 

And what was Bixby doing? He and Bix had done this before, after all, in the Forest of Darney. In the Forest of Darney,  Bix kept Luc talking, preoccupied, leaving Endeavour poised for the ambush.

It was Bix who was the glib one, Bix who excelled at throwing people off their guard; shouldn’t he be trying to engage Reece now, rather than circling slowly off beside him?

 

 “It was _me,”_ Reece said. “You were talking to _me_ , right as Susan came in to that party. And then she looked right at me and....” His face seemed to contort into a mask of frustration. “I loved Susan. For years and years. I would have done anything for her. I knew that her mother—dreadful, overbearing woman —was pushing her and pushing her to Henry. I knew Susan was looking for the chance to strike out on her own, to get out of her mother’s controlling grasp. And on that night, Susan looked right at me— and I was looking right into her eyes, right into _my_ future, and then she walked up and tapped you on the shoulder.”

 

And then Endeavour remembered: Reece was right, it was he who he had been talking to when Susan had first invited him to Tony’s aunt’s house, and . . .

 

“And then you turned, and as soon as you two looked at one another, it was like I was invisible, like I wasn’t even standing right _there,”_ Reeceshouted. “She asked you, and off you went. And then, before the year was even out, you were engaged.”

 

Reece was working his way into a frenzy; he was a man obsessed with hashing over the past, with dragging every perceived injustice out into the light. So focused was he on Endeavour, he appeared to have forgotten all about Bix. And they were doing this wrong, all wrong. It was Bixby who knew how to outwit an opponent, Endeavour who knew how to subdue a suspect.

Because Thursday was right.

 My God.

He actually did once tackle a mad opera killer on a roof, didn’t he?

  
“But of course, you fucked that up,” Reece continued. “By the end of the year, you and Susan were off and Susan and Henry back on. So off you go into the army, leaving Susan to moon over what had become of you, day in and day out. I don’t know how Henry could stand to hear it. I certainly couldn’t.”

“And then, years later, just as I thought I could forget, there she is, bursting into Bixby’s party, right there, ready to take you off at gunpoint,” Reece shouted.  

 

“You were there?” Endeavour asked.  

 

Endeavour tried to telegraph his thoughts to Bixby, but Bix just shook his head and widened his eyes alarmingly, as if he feared Endeavour might ruin his plan. 

 

 “Yes, I was there!" Reece shouted. "Half of Oxford was there!  My God, if she had come looking for me, I would have knocked people over to get to the door! But not you.”

“So, what’s this? You think killing me will endear you to Susan?” Endeavour asked.  

“I think killing you will help me sleep better at night,” he cried. “Because it’s not right! You do everything the wrong way, and it all magically works out for you. I plow along, ticking all the right boxes, and I have nothing.”

“It doesn’t feel like it’s always worked out for me, to be honest,” Endeavour said.

“Shut up!” Reece said. “I’ve got a gun in your face, and you’re still going to argue with me! It’s your fault, all of it! And now, you’ve made it so that it’s impossible to ever, ever forget.”

“I? What have I done on that score?” Endeavour cried, outraged. 

“I’ve got one of them in every tutorial, don't I?” Reece said. “One of your barmy little disciples, one of your look-alikes. This Scotland thing is all they’ve been able to talk about all term. ‘ _Endeavour’s right. Why should we waste our lives chasing after material possessions, man?_ ’” Reece laughed wildly. “If that’s so, maybe you won’t mind sending a bit my way then. As compensation for having you rubbed in my _face_ wherever I turn. I won’t stand for it!"

"Money, then?" Endeavour asked. "Is that it? Was that your main draw to Ames? What cut did he give you, in return for your turning a blind eye to his dealings at the colleges? And what of your students? What of Jack Hutchens and Mark Ashley? What did they ever do to you?"

"That was their choice! I didn't hold the needle for them! Why shouldn't I supplement my paltry income however I can?  Jerome Hogg certainly has. That was my story to tell! _My_ heartbreak!”

 

Reece had let himself be led into such a blind rage, that Bixby had managed to work his way out of the line of his peripheral vision.

 

And that’s when, in one rush of movement, Bixby tackled him.

He knocked Reece face-forwards to the ground, and, in one fluid motion, snatched the gun from Reece’s hand by the barrel, swung it high, and hit him across the back of the skull with the handle.

One sickening crack sounded in the room, and Reece fell limp to the floor.  

 

Endeavour froze into place where he stood, his eyes blown wide.

Bixby looked up and smoothed his ruffled hair into place with the back of the arm that held the gun.

“Why are you looking so surprised, old man?” Bixby asked. “I told you I played wide receiver. Typically, it’s an offensive position, but we are called upon to tackle and opponent in the case of an errant pass. You know, to prevent an interception.”

 

But Endeavour’s heart was still hammering in his ears. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said.

“What I said is, ‘What did you think? That I was just another pretty face?’” Bixby said.

 

The blood was still pounding in Endeavour’s ears too loudly for him to make sense of anything; now that the danger was past, he felt as if he was shaking from head to foot in the aftermath.  

 

But then—too late— Endeavour realized what a mistake it had been, letting down their guard. For in the next moment, CS Dawkins came into the office and raised a gun, cocking it with a decisive click, catching Bix unprepared.

“Drop it! Drop the gun!” he commanded.

 

Bixby appeared to play over his options for a moment, and then, finding no alternative, dropped the gun.

 

“Now, get up, and stand over there by him,” Dawkins said, indicating Endeavour with a jerk of his head.

As Bixby stepped back, Dawkins stepped forward, retrieving the gun off the floor and pocketing it. Then he nudged the unconscious Reece with the side of his foot.

 

“Reece,” he said. “Reece!” He nudged at the man again with his foot. “Jesus, Reece, if you couldn’t manage to stick with the plan, couldn’t you keep it together for five minutes?”

Then he looked up at Endeavour. “Endeavour Morse. You are under arrest for . . ."

“For what?” Endeavour cried, for the second time in ten minutes.

 

At that moment, Jerome Hogg came to a stop on the threshold of his office door, blinking myopically behind his glasses. He looked about the room—now a tableau worthy of a nineteenth-century melodrama—in disbelief. “What is happening here?” he said.

“You too, Hogg. Get those hands up.”

Dawkins aimed the gun into Hogg’s face, and Hogg went pale.

 

“What’s _he_ done?” Endeavour shouted, outraged. “He’s just come into the room!”

“Well,” Dawkins said, as if considering the matter. “For starters, there’s that package of heroin in his desk.”

“What?” Hogg managed, weakly.

“How would you know that?” Endeavour said. “You haven’t even looked over there, yet!”

“ _Endeavour_ ,” Bixby said.

 But Endeavour was undaunted. “I’d be interested to see if Hogg’s fingerprints are on one scrap of that,” he said. “Reece planted it all.”

“Oh, is that so?” Dawkins said, his voice low, each syllable spoken with cold deliberation. “Why don’t you prove it?”

“Get it tested for prints!” Endeavour shouted.

“Why? Reece knows to wear gloves.”

“Well,” Endeavour snorted, “You won’t find Hogg’s prints on any of that.”  

“Oh, I don’t know,”  Dawkins said, leveling the gun at Jerome. “I don’t think it will be too difficult to get him to pick those papers and that package up, do you? And it’s not as if his guilt or innocence will mean much to him anyway, seeing as you are about to kill him, Morse.”

”What?” Jerome cried.  
 

“There’s the typewriter,” Endeavour countered, triumphantly. “A typewriter that he’s been using with a misaligned _r_ key. I’d bet money that that’s in Reece’s office right now! Or at his house!”

 

Bixby groaned in dismay. But why? Now what had he done?

 

“That can disappear,” Dawkins said. “You of all people should know that.”

 

And then, Endeavour couldn't repress a gasp. Because suddenly, Jim Strange and Constable Tyler were there, in the door.

 

Strange walked in quietly, his face impassive, Tyler, one step behind, looking to Strange for direction.

For the merest fraction of a second, a look of surprise flitted across Dawkins' face. “Sergeant Strange. Constable Tyler,” he said. “I would have thought you would be over at the Green Knight.”

 

“We were in Jericho, sir. Stolen car. By the time we got back to the nick, I got a call letting me know I was needed here,” Strange said.

Dawkins faltered for a moment, and then he resumed his tone of authority and command.  “You’re here just in time to help me bring these men in, then.”

But Jim Strange said nothing. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Endeavour felt as if he was staring into his face, willing him to read his mind, to understand.

“What was that you were saying, sir?” Strange asked, conversationally, coming up alongside the chief superintendent.  “About a typewriter?”  

“None of your concern, sergeant,” Dawkins barked.  

 

Then, suddenly, with one powerful lunge, Strange kicked Dawkins’ left leg out from under him, seizing the gun from out of his hand as he fell.

The older man, stunned by the attack from his subordinate, scrambled to his feet. “Strange! Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”  

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Strange said, in his typically measured voice, holding the gun steadily at Dawkins.  “I guess you could call it 'pursuing an inquiry.'"

Strange took a deep breath and frowned. “Sounded to me as if you were talking about a typewriter disappearing. How would that work, exactly? Would that be the same way that gun disappeared out of evidence in Kingston?”

Dawkins appeared to pale a bit, but he quickly recovered. “What the hell are you on about? I’ll have your warrant card for this, Strange!”  

“The thing of it is,” Strange said. “I’ve just had a rather interesting phone call. From Miss Frazil. From the Oxford Mail. She told me of an interesting case, in which you were the arresting officer. Of a teenage miscreant, who had already worked up quite a little record for himself. He ended up evading all charges, ended up right back on the streets. His gun, it seemed, had disappeared out of evidence.”

“So, what of it? It happens sometimes,” Dawkins said.

“Because the criminal was underage at the time of arrest, the police wouldn’t release his name to the press,” Strange continued.

“Well, there you are. You’ve got nothing to go on. Nothing tying me to Cromwell Ames.”

Strange tilted his head. “Did I say anything about Ames, sir?”

Dawkins grimaced, realizing his mistake.

“And, if you would let me finish: I said they wouldn’t release the name to the _press_. But,” he added, “they were able to release it to me.”

Dawkins’ eyes widened.

“Cromwell Ames,” Strange said. “Now that’s a bit of coincidence, some might say. Wouldn’t you? Something worth looking into, certainly." 

Dawkins said nothing.

“Take him in, Constable,” Strange said.  

“Yes, sir," Tyler said. 

**********************

It was like looking back on a scene he had seen before.  Strange and Tyler hustled Reece and Dawkins into the back of a squad car.

“You’ve made some sort of mistake,” Reece protested. “Some sort of mistake.”

And Endeavour was CS Bright, standing off to the side, watching them go.

 

He and Bix gave their statements to an officer in uniform.

And then, incredibly enough, they were free to go.   

 And when they drove off, Endeavour didn't look back. 

 

***********

Bixby twisted the phone cord in his hand and listened to Holden drone on, his impatience growing with every syllable.

“Seven point five percent, old man. That’s my final offer,” Bixby said.

He rolled his eyes when the man began to argue. Maybe Endeavour was right. All these old games, it seemed, had lost their savor.

Restoring the house, though—that had been rather interesting. It was more than figures in columns, it was rather more tangible, something real. 

Just look at that brutally ugly building Endeavour had to work in, the Thames Valley station. And that was just one of many like it, being built. Perhaps Bixby might consider trying his hand at construction—not that he'd be interested in any dodgy projects that served as fronts for gangsters. He'd pursue his own projects, build things of quality and style.

It seemed a shame, after all, driving through Oxford's suburbs, seeing how many trees were being felled for poorly planned sprawl--seeing so many rendeavous spots for secret lovers bulldozed over by men seeking a quick profit.

“Seven-point five percent, or I’m done,” Bix repeated. 

 

Just then, Endeavour flitted into the doorway.

 

Damn.

He was wearing the full regalia, fly plaid and all. And with all of the events of the past few days, it had been a while since he had trimmed his hair—the red-gold-tawny waves were standing out in spirals around his face. He looked half wild, as if he had just stepped into his study,out from roaming the windswept moors at sunset.

Bix held up the receiver to show Endeavour he was on the phone, but Endeavour didn’t seem to care. He walked in slowly, picking up some papers on his desk and setting them down, looking as if he had places he would rather be.

Bixby watched him, perplexed.

“What was that, Holden, old man?” he asked.

Endeavour walked over to him until he was standing right before him, and then, he tucked one bony knee down into the corner of his chair, swinging his leg around and tucking his other knee into the other corner, so that he was straddling him, pinning him with lean, strong thighs firmly back into the large, leather chair.

Then, Endeavour buried his face in the crook of Bix's shoulder and planted slow kisses up the side of his throat to his jawline . . . his soft hair brushing the side of Bix's face as he went.

It was a miracle that Bixby managed to hold the receiver away from his face before his breath caught in a surprised gasp. Followed by a low moan.

Because it was true what they always said about kilts; Endeavour didn’t have a stitch on under the thing. Bix could feel every contour of Endeavour's warm body through his wool trousers, trousers which were becoming increasingly tight and uncomfortable, as Endeavour began to rock softly against him.

“Holden. I’ll have to call you back.”

Endeavour’s laugh was low and warm in his ear; it was the laugh of the victor.

Bixby slammed the phone down and managed to get it on the edge of the desk before wrapping his arms around Endeavour and meeting his flushed mouth in a kiss.

Endeavour was rolling his hips beautifully, and Bix was torn: he wanted desperately to free his cock from his tight trousers, but he didn’t want Endeavour to move from right where he was.

 

Finally, he had to act. He took Endeavour’s hips in his hands, hoping to move him up so that he could undo his belt and fly before settling him back down into place.

But Endeavour must have been thinking of yesterday afternoon, when they were in the car, because at that moment, he squirmed in Bixby's grip to move down, as if to slip under the desk.

 

It was enough to throw the chair off balance. Bixby froze where he was, but something about the sensation of falling must have set Endeavour off, and he lurched upwards in a panic—and that was the final blow: the next thing Bixby knew, he was falling backwards, and Endeavour’s blue eyes went wide and round before he threw out his arms on either side of Bixby’s head.

Endeavour caught them and lowered the chair to the ground. Bixby could see his pulse beating wildly in his throat.

It was too bad; it wasn’t often that Endeavour felt confident enough to attempt to pull off any sort of deliberate seduction. It was true, what Endeavour had told Reece. Things never _did_ seem to work out the way he had planned.

Endeavour remained stock still until it was clear that the chair was stable, and then he looked at Bixby. “Did you mean to do that?” he asked.

“No,” Bixby said, with a bemused laugh.  

“Oh,” Endeavour said. “All right. It’s just that . . . if this was something you wanted to try . . . well, I’m just not sure what’s physically possible like this.”

Bixby started to sit up, to help Endeavour unwedge himself, but then he thought the better of it and remained where he was. It was actually quite nice, half-lying, half-sitting, absolutely enveloped under Endeavour’s warm weight, his thighs straddled on either side of him.

With his hair framing his face like a halo as he looked down at him, and with his long arms outstretched, Endeavour looked just like the angel in the painting he had bought. The real one, the one that Bix had bought in Colmar, the one with the angel who looked as if he were half-toppling out of the sky.

“Are you all right?” Bixby asked.

Endeavour cautiously pulled his arms in one at a time, resting his hands on Bixby’s chest.

He appeared to give the matter some thought before he answered. “Yes.”

 

“I’ll tell you what, then,” Bixby said, “Why don’t we just roll with this and see where it goes.”

Endeavour laughed, that funny laugh that sounded like air being let out of a balloon.

Bixby reached one hand up, cupping his nape, and pulled him in for a kiss. Endeavour, though, was still laughing, and he broke apart, long enough to say, “It’s like something from the Kama Sutra.”

Bixby kept one hand in Endeavour’s curls, and with the other, he reached between their bodies and managed to undo his belt and fly. Endeavour arched his back up to give him space to work and added, “Well, not really.”

Then Endeavour rose higher onto his knees, allowing Bixby to move his trousers down further and mused, “These sorts of chairs weren’t invented until the eighteenth century.”

 

Fascinating.

 

Bixby toed off his shoes one at a time, and Endeavour reached around behind him, and, with one arm, pulled Bix’s trousers and underpants off the rest of the way and tossed them across the room. Then, as if he had just been tidying up his records or changing a typewriter ribbon, rather than stripping Bixby from his trousers, he said, informatively, “It was one of your presidents. Did you know? Thomas Jefferson.”

 

Well, what was Bixby thinking? It had been an eventful few days, after all. Endeavour had more than enough material to work up a veritable snowstorm, no doubt.

But that was fine, then.

It wasn’t as if Bixby wasn’t the sort who liked a bit of a challenge.

 

He reached down and cupped Endeavour’s arse in both hands, pulling him forward and settling him firmly against him, and then, he turned his head to plant a long kiss in the hollow of his throat.

Endeavour let out a soft moan and melted against him. Bixby laughed and traced a row of kisses up his jawline. He could tell by Endeavour's breathing that, soon, those big eyes would go slightly unfocused, and the circles in his mind would stop spinning, and the snowstorm would fall to a hush.

And Endeavour wouldn’t be thinking of Sanskrit manuscripts or American inventions; he’d be, for once, firmly planted in his body.

And, then, Endeavour would belong entirely to him.

 

 

***** Three Months Later ******

Shirley Trewlove sat across the table from George and looked up at the paintings on the ceiling. It was a beautiful old restaurant, dating from the 1920s, with jewel-colored murals arching across the plaster above. 

"Nice, eh?" George said, with typical understatement. 

George looked older somehow, wearing a slightly better fitting suit. His Adam’s apple, showing so prominently above his collar, however, slightly offset the effect, making him look a bit still like a boy playing at dress up.

They were just finishing their meal and sipping the last bit of wine, when George’s soft brown eyes turned solemn.

And then he pulled out a jewelry box.

 

Oh, no.

 

“George, I . . . “ Shirley began.

“It’s all right,” George assured her.

“No, really, I . . . George . . . “

“Shirl. Really. It’s all right.”

His face looked so bemused, that she couldn’t help but take the box. She snapped it open. And . . .

 

 . . . and it wasn’t a ring.

It was a necklace, with one tear-drop, sapphire pendant.

Utterly simple and elegant and lovely.

It must have cost him a month's pay.

 

“George, I can’t accept this, It must have cost you . . . “

“Shirl,” he said. “Please. You’ve seen my place. I live with three other blokes. The rent’s a pittance.”

She laughed. She had seen his flat, and it was, indeed, the perfect epitome of what one would call a "bachelor pad."

“I’d like you to have it," George said. "I like to think . . . I don’t know. You see so many things in your day. I’d just like you to have something, I don’t know, nice to look at. When you come home. That’s all.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Shirley said. “Thank you.”

It must have been the contrast of the softness of the candlelight, because suddenly his face looked shaper, as if a new sort of happiness had brightened his face.

 

She had once thought him so awfully young. But then, she had come to realize that, after all, she was quite young, too.

The day marking the final chapter of Ames' and Nero’s ill-fated gang war, the day that they, and so many others, had been killed at the Green Knight, the day Dawkins and Reece had been arrested, had been an absolute frenzy.

But, of all that had happened that day, the thing she could not get out of her mind was what Morse had said as he sat waiting for Thursday, circling in Sgt. Strange’s chair.

 

_“Why?” Morse asked. “A career won’t hold you at three in the morning when the wolves come circling."_

 

She had thought he must be having one on on her, and so she said, with a smile in her voice, " _Do_ they come circling, Morse?"

 

He looked at her, then, with such forthrightness, with such a raw expression on his face, that, when he answered simply, "yes," she felt thrown off her guard.

She felt wrong-footed somehow, even as if she had been cruel. She hadn’t meant to make light of what he said, but she had. 

But it wasn’t there that she felt it, the swooping sense of an odd, new realization: It was in Morse’s slightly wounded, crestfallen look afterwards: as if realized, too late, that the raw truth wasn’t quite the thing to hand out at half past four in a police station. And it was in the way that Bixby—who she had considered to be the ultimate shallow hedonist—had looked away, in just the manner that one might turn away from the scene of a car crash, rather than openly gawk at the wreckage. 

 

Suddenly, she understood, that, in many ways, she, too, despite her poise, was still awfully young. That there were still things of which she, happily, knew nothing.

 

It was true what she told Morse: she and George _did_ have plenty of time ahead of them. 

 

Was George Fancy the boy who might grow into the right man for her?

The answer, surprisingly enough, was yes, he just might be. 

But what surprised her even more was to learn that, she, too, in many ways, was still just a girl.

One who just might grow up to be the right woman for George Fancy.

 

 

*************************

Thursday cut across the lawn, heading out toward the lake. He could hear the roar of the hydroplane all the way from the circular drive, so he figured Morse and Bix must be somewhere about the place.

And sure enough, he found Morse, sitting lengthwise on the outdoor swing, his legs stretched out, scribbling away in a notebook in his lap. 

“Morse,” he said, as he approached. 

“Hello, sir," Morse answered. 

 

Morse moved his long legs in one at a time, allowing Thursday a place to sit.

Thursday sank into the cushioned garden seat and looked over the lake, where Bixby was tearing about on his red hydroplane.

 

Morse said nothing more, but began writing on a fresh page in his notebook. But it was all right. It was a companionable silence, at least. A respite from the frosty silences at home.

 

For now, his house—once his home, but now his home no longer—had become even more unbearably empty; Win had returned, but she barely spoke to him, barely looked at him. It was as if he were a ghost. It was as if, in fact, he was fading. Dying a little each day.

 

Every morning he woke, determined to start afresh, to meet the day with a forced cheerfulness, as if by pretending his betrayal had never happened, they might pick up where they had left off.

 

“Want some tea, love? Anything on for the day, love? Fancy anything from Richardson’s, love?”

“No. Yes. No.”

 

Every day was like a fresh twist in the gut, a fresh rejection.

 

“Have you had tea?”

“Shepherd’s pie."

And he, clasping his hands together as though it was the best news he ever heard: "Smashing."

And she, without so much as looking at him, would clarify: "At work." 

 

The evenings were the worst: she went out every night now, pausing before the mirror in the hall before she left, putting on her lipstick with slow deliberateness.

Of course, he knew he was to understand that she wasn’t putting on lipstick just to tool around the aisles at Richardson’s or to go to the post office.

 

“How are you?” Morse asked, finally, in his low and mournful voice.

“Well enough.”

“You don’t look well enough. You look sort of awful, really."

“Thanks a lot,” Thursday grunted.  

 

Then the lad returned to his scribbling, as if they hadn’t spoken.

 

“I was sorry to hear about your disciplinary,” he said, after a space. “You deserved better.”

"I don’t know about that," Thursday replied. 

 

Because, Christ, what a disaster. The Green Knight had been a bloodbath: Ames dead, Nero dying—Constable Meehan shot in the chest, struggling in hospital for days before his condition was moved to stable. 

And, worst of all--despite the number of postmortem photos available after the incident, despite all of the thugs they had brought in, neither Fancy nor Meehan recognized their attackers amidst the lot of them. A man who had taken shots at two coppers was still somewhere out there, somewhere at large. 

 

And even if it _could_ be argued that what had happened at the Green Knight was not his fault, the fact that it had been allowed to get to that point certainly was. 

He had made the mistake even the greenest copper knows to avoid—he had let himself get too run down, he had let himself get distracted.

He had held the note in his hand, the note from Constable Tyler written on the yellow note pad. He had held it, and he hadn’t read it. He could have brought those red letters to Morse that morning, and Morse could have told them what they meant.  They could have been ready. But he was too slow.

 

  _“I was too slow,” Morse had said._

 

Morse looked up at him, that wide blue gaze solemn, as if he was seeing right through him. Then, he tore the piece of paper out of his notebook and handed it to him.

Thursday took it and read it and . . . Oh, Christ. It was a love poem. A swotty one at that.

“I can’t give this to Win, Morse,” he said. 

“Why not?”

“It’s just . . . it’s just not me. I can’t write her a poem." 

“She’ll like it,” Morse said knowingly.

"I’ve been a married man twenty-five years. I think I know my own wife." 

Morse looked at him undaunted, and ripped another page out, handing it to Thursday. 

Thursday read. “This one is worse than the other one," he complained. "I can't give her something as swotty at this."

Morse seemed to take offense at that, and he snatched the paper back. Then he tore a blank piece of paper from his notebook and handed it to him.

"What's this, then?" Thursday asked. 

"Write you own," Morse said tersely. 

Thursday sighed in exasperation. 

 

"You better do something," Morse said. "Just pretending like it never happened isn’t getting you anywhere, clearly." 

Thursday grunted.

"That's what you're doing, isn't it?" Morse challenged. " _'How was your day, love?_ '" 

 

Oh hell. The lad did his bit spot on. 

 

Morse seemed to realize that that last may have been a strike too far, for he looked contrite. 

“Well,” Morse said. “If it’s any consolation, she won’t talk to me either.”

“What’s this?” Thursday asked. 

“I called, and she just put me off. I thought we were friends. How can you go book shopping in Paris with someone and not be friends?" Morse said. 

"It’s not you, lad," Thursday said, quietly. "You’re an extension of me, in this case, I think. She’s not stupid. She knows what you’re up to.”

“What’s that?” asked Morse tartly.

“Sticking your nose in.”

Morse snorted at that. “She didn’t mind my interfering when I found Joan.”

Thursday looked at him sharply. “I thought you just 'ran into' Joan.”

Morse flushed red from his throat, staining his cheeks a light pink.

 

Thursday let the matter drop. He had seen enough complicated domestic situations to understand the heightened sensitivities of children of divorce. Bizarrely, Morse seemed more invested in his and Win’s future than either Sam or Joan, who were more focused now on their own lives. But Sam and Joan had, at least, grown up in a stable home; at least he and Win had given them that much. Whereas Morse tended to behave as if he was now a child of divorce twice over.

And no wonder the lad was disillusioned; it was right here, on this spot, nearly four years ago, that he had told Thursday that one of the only beautiful things he had seen in the world was their marriage, a love as solid and as real as sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. 

 

Ah, well. Thursday thought. Nothing lasts, after all, it seems. 

 

"I wish you would just let me give you . . . " Morse began. 

"None of that now," Thursday said sharply, cutting him off. 

Morse blinked, slightly stunned by his vehemence. 

He sighed heavily. “Look lad, I didn’t come here to hash over this.”

 

Because there had been something niggling at him since they closed the Reece and Dawkins cases.

 

“I just. . . well. I just wanted to give credit where credit is due. You may not be much of a marriage counselor, but you’re a good detective. I’d have been a lot worse off without you here, this past winter." 

Morse stilled at that, and Thursday could practically feel the protest in the air. Thursday had been playing the blame game for months, but he knew Morse was the master.

But then Morse shrugged one bony shoulder, as if he didn't feel up to the fight. 

 

"Thank you," he said simply. 

 

"There's something I've been meaning to give to you," Thursday said. 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out Morse’s old warrant card—the one that had been withheld by Mr. Bright from the Blenheim Vale files— and handed it to Morse.

Morse said nothing for a while, just looked at the photo wonderingly. 

“Well," he said finally. "That was me, then."

“Yes,” Thursday said. “That’s you.”

 

Morse looked sharply down at that, making that funny little movement he so often made in awkward situations. Then he tucked the card into his satchel. 

 

"I suppose you will be off soon?" Thursday asked. "Back to France?" 

"Yes," Morse said. "We would have left earlier, but Bixby's been wrapping up a few things."

Thursday didn't ask.

"We're coming back, though," Morse said. "In July or so. Esme and Guillaume are doing an English language immersive course, at Oxford. It's their first time abroad, and their parents would feel better if they had someone here in Britain, just in case, you know . . . on the off chance they need something." 

"Oh," Thursday said. "So. No handshakes, then?" 

"No," Morse said, with a low laugh.  

"Well then," Thursday said, feeling lighter then he did twenty minutes earlier as he got to his feet. "Mind how you go." 

"Sir," Morse said. 

 

 

**********

 

“Any luck?" Bixby asked. 

"No," Endeavour said. "If things aren't right, when we get back, I might just have to intervene."  

Bixby paused diplomatically.  "I don't think that's a good idea," he said.  

"No?" 

"No," Bixby said. 

 

"But," Bixby added, "I'll tell you what _is_ a good idea--giving the hydroplane a try." 

"No," Endeavour said. 

 

"If you try it once and hate it, I will promise to leave you alone about it for the rest of your days," Bixby said. 

Endeavour regarded him uncertainly. "All right then," he said. "But this is a deal, right?" 

"Of course, old man."

Endeavour hummed noncommittally.  

 

They walked side by side across the grass, down to the lake; it was the mildest day of the year so far, and the air was just taking on a scent as green and earthy as spring, the sun just beginning to gather its strength. 

 

Endeavour moved to get into the back of the hydroplane, but Bixby stopped him. "No, you’re sitting in front. It’s no fun if you're not driving the thing." 

Endeavour hesitated, but then climbed in. "Where are the brakes?" he asked, settling into the seat. 

"First, you crank this, Bixby said, sitting behind him and reaching over his shoulder.

"Where are the brakes?" Endeavour asked. 

"Now punch this button," Bixby said, giving a green button a push. 

 

In a burst of sudden speed, they shot out across the lake. And he was hurtling forward, like a beam of light over the dark water, spray flying lightly across his face. And it was freedom itself. It didn't matter if he drove on the left or on the right--he could go anywhere. He could even give his statement and go home. 

And Endeavour was shooting forward and forward, and it was true what Mr. Bright had said. He was Orpheus, and it _would_ be a better tomorrow. He was Orpheus, and it was all right, after all, to look back.

 

Because Bixby was hardly any spectral Eurydice.

Bixby was right there, the scent of his aftershave bright in the air, and the stubble of his face brushing right alongside his as he reached forward to punch another button.

Bixby would always be there, just an arm’s reach away, just one half-step ahead. 

And even a thousand underworlds would not be able to divide them.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I am planning a season 6 remix as I said before... (If there are any plot lines, characters, scenes from season 6 you would like to see "remixed" in this verse, please let me know :0) 
> 
> Oh, wait! One season 6 plot point to move out of the way: 
> 
> Endeavour tapped his razor smartly against the sink.  
> "So," he asked. "What do you think?"  
> Bixby paused diplomatically. He hadn’t planned on saying anything, but since Endeavour was asking him directly....  
>  "Ah," he said. "Well . . . it's . . . “  
> “What?“  
> “It's a bit like kissing a hamster, old man," Bixby said.  
> "Oh," Endeavour said.  
> *and then he shaved it off* :0)


End file.
